Credit: Dangerous Minds / Colin Davis

Desperation makes people do strange things, and people who have addictions to drugs so severe that they try to keep them alive in prison are no strangers to desperation.

It might seem like stupid or arrogant behaviour from our perspective, but think about it, the way one lives life that close to the edge is by never, ever, ever admitting defeat. The fantasy of a crook coming in quietly, of smiling and offering his wrists for the cuffs with a wry “it’s a fair cop, guv” is a thing of fantasy. I’d say it’s a thing of the past, but somehow, considering prison conditions of history and treatment of convicted criminals even after they’ve done their time, I don’t even think it’s that.

No. One’s only hope is to deny everything and just hope that you get that elusive natural 20, that sheer bit of blind luck that can keep you running for another day. They’re not stupid (most of the time), they just have to live by their own brass neck. Again, desperation can make you do very strange things, and few people know this like everyone in the room when a Pennsylvania prison inmate named Edwin Greco Wylie-Biggs was summoned for a strip search in 2018.

A warden had seen an inmate pass a bag of something to Wylie-Biggs and had pretty much immediately brought him into a private room, where a bag of synthetic weed was found on his person. Wylie-Biggs denied all knowledge of it, despite the fact that the bag wasn’t in his prison issue jumpsuit, it was stuck up his rectum.

Despite evidence this incriminating, Wylie-Biggs still looked those prison officers in the eye and said the drugs weren’t his, and that he had no idea how they got there. You’ve got to hand it to the lad, that does take some serious spine.

Of course, an extra three years were added to Wylie-Biggs’ sentence, yet if the original act of defiance and sheer, bloody-minded denial wasn’t enough, the absolute madlad appealed this decision. Taking the case to state court and arguing that the prison guards hadn’t proved that the synthetic weed was his. It took five pages of his appeal for the judge, William H Platt, to dismiss it out of hand and approve the sentence of three to six extra years of prison time for possession of contraband.

As if to prove that this kind of desperation isn’t as rare as it might seem, this is far from the only time this exact argument has been made. In 2019, an inmate in Nashville steadfastly claimed that he “had nothing on him” while a pink bag of fentanyl was clearly hanging between his buttocks. This wasn’t even the only time this exact story happened that year, and if you have a problem with needles, this might be a rough one for you.

In Florida (you knew that state was going to make an appearance on an article like this, didn’t you?), Wesley Dasher Scott was called in for a contraband search on the suspicion that he was harbouring weed. During his strip search, in what might be the most bullish action in this article, Scott himself removed three syringes from his rectum (fucking yikes) and placed them on the table like it was absolutely nothing.

When pressed about the syringes, Scott said that he had “found them”.

At the very least, Scott didn’t push back against the drug charges the way that Wylie-Biggs had, accepting several more charges, including felony possession of contraband in a county detention facility. Desperation only goes so far, I guess.