Women's prison: Sex trade

Vocational plumbing instructor Anastacio "Ted" Gallardo's clandestine meeting with an inmate in a dusty storage building at the state women's prison in east Topeka was to be a simple exchange of cash for sex.

Instead, the encounter indirectly pulled back the cover of a complex black market at the Topeka Correctional Facility catering to inmates' demand for contraband -- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs -- and the willingness of prison employees to engage in trafficking to gratify financial or carnal appetites.

"I managed to get pretty much anything into that facility that you could think of through guards or drop-offs along the fence," said former inmate Kendra Barnes, who served nine years at TCF on aggravated burglary, theft and robbery convictions before paroled in late 2008. "Sex for drugs? Sure."

Interviews with current and former female prisoners, past and present corrections employees, lawyers, politicians and civil rights advocates as well as a review of hundreds of confidential or public documents related to activities at TCF, including a 150-page transcript of court hearings from the prosecution of Gallardo, point to a workplace culture at the state's lone prison for women that leaves the door open to misconduct.

TCF inmates and corrections officers say as many as one-third of the Topeka facility's 250 employees have at one time been involved in contraband activities with prisoners, but top administrators of the Kansas Department of Corrections say that percentage is inflated. DOC officials say a more realistic estimate is 2 percent of the 3,000 employees at the state's eight prisons...