Deaths At Chicago Prison Show That Soaked Papers Are A Previously Unheard Form of Drug Smuggling: Report

A string of deaths at Chicago’s Cook County Jail were found to be tied to an unlikely source – paper.

Authorities learned that drug-soaked paper was being smuggled into the jail. The results were sometimes lethal, with six inmates dying from overdoses over the course of a year in 2023, the New York Post reported.

“We didn’t know what was on [the paper], but we knew it was a drug,” Cook County Sheriff’s Office chief of staff Brad Curry told the outlet. “And it was a race against time … we had a new drug that is very, very toxic and very, very deadly, that Narcan apparently didn’t work on”.

The newspaper went on to note that authorities attempted to warn the jail’s 6,000-inmate population with warning signs: “Do not take drugs in the jail if you want to live.”

Jail officials began inspecting as much paper as possible that came into the prison. And began making arrests.

In August 2024, corrections deputy Shadonna Jones, 54, was charged with possession of a controlled substance after being allegedly found with dozens of sheets of paper soaked in suspected illegal drugs. Investigators said they found a letter written to the deputy by an inmate that stated he sold “paper” for $10,000 a page, and that Jones would be paid $2,500 for each package of paper she could bring into the Jail.

A separate August arrest involved a 47-year-old woman who came to the jail for a visit. Officers searched Nakeisha Andrews and found an 8 x 10 piece of paper wrapped in plastic from inside her shirt. The paper, which appeared to be soaked in an unknown substance, was sent to the Illinois State Police forensic lab for testing and came back positive for heroin and fentanyl.

The New York Post reported that the jail had made around 130 such arrests since the deaths began in 2023. The number of inmate deaths fell to just one in 2024 and 2025. But, two inmates have already died this year.

“I think the type of drug that they’re using now, the potency of that drug, will probably be a contributing factor to why we see a [bigger] rise this year [in deaths] than what we’ve seen the last two years,” Curry told the Post. “If you’re a police officer and you pull somebody over … and there’s a stack of paper in an open Office Depot wrapper, you have no idea that that’s $1 million worth of drugs right there, and your dogs are not going to hit on it. Nobody’s going to know that … until we educate all our police officers.”