Body scanners will be installed at Hunter jails in the first stages of an $18.6 million roll-out across NSW included in the Berejiklian Government's 2020-21 budget handed down this week.
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The government says the initiative is an effort to fight the smuggling of drugs and other contraband into the state's correctional facilities.
"Keeping inmates off drugs and on the path to rehabilitation is crucial to reducing re-offending rates," NSW Corrections Minister Anthony Roberts said.
A Corrective Services NSW spokesperson told the Newcastle Herald the Shortland and Hunter maximum security jails at Cessnock would be among the first sites to have body scanners installed.
The scanners will be used on people entering correctional centres for contact visits with inmates.
Prisoners will also be scanned when they first arrive at jail as well as after each contact visit.
There have been several cases of significant smuggling busts at the Lower Hunter prisons so far this year.
During one weekend in late April, officers found 100 strips of buprenorphine - a prescription medication for people addicted to opioids - tobacco and other drugs in mail addressed to inmates at the Shortland and Mid North Coast correctional centres.
Around the same time, a pair of sneakers sent by express post to Cessnock jail caught the attention of a sniffer dog performing screening duties.
Security officers then found 80 buprenorphine strips sewn into the tongues of the sneakers.
On April 26, prison officers seized a plastic bag containing contraband after they saw two men run from a perimeter fence at the Shortland facility and flee in a car.
Ninety-nine buprenorphine strips, 200 grams of tobacco and other drugs were hidden inside five tennis balls and a mobile phone and charger were concealed inside a drink bottle.
Then, on the afternoon of July 25, security officers caught a man hiding behind bushes near the Shortland centre in possession of a tennis ball full of cannabis, tobacco and buprenorphine.
NSW Police charged the man.
The following morning, Corrective Services NSW officers searched a car near Cessnock jail and found a drone with a line of string connecting it to a package containing 108 buprenorphine strips, 42 buprenorphine tablets and slightly less than a gram of a substance believed to be cannabis.
Commissioner Peter Severin said at the time there had been an increase in attempts to use mail, drones and tennis balls to smuggle contraband and other drugs into the state's prisons.
"The good work by our correctional centre staff and our SOG [Secutiry Operations Group] teams in searching for and detecting contraband should send a clear message to these people that we are alert and you will get caught," he said.
"Our officers are proactive and undertake daily contraband searches of inmates, cells and common areas, with the assistance of the SOG. These searches also focus on inmate mail and prison perimeter fences."
