Luxembourg Prison Introduces IONSCAN 600 to Combat Drug Trafficking

Luxembourg's Prison Administration has announced that it is introducing an electronic substance detection tool called IONSCAN 600 to combat the presence, trafficking and abuse of narcotics in prison.

On Tuesday, Jörn Patzak, director of Wittlich Prison in Germany, an eminent narcotic specialist and former prosecutor, presented and demonstrated the IONSCAN 600 system at Schrassig Prison in Luxembourg.

The IONSCAN 600 is a mobile device which, thanks to ion mobility spectrometry technology, is able to detect narcotic drugs even in traces by comparing them to a database. This database includes the ionic signature of illicit substances previously encoded in the system, which allows immediate detection. The IONSCAN 600 is already being successfully used in the framework of a pilot project at Wittlich Prison in Rhineland-Palatinate in south-western Germany. Since the fight against drug abuse in prisons is one of the main priorities of the prison administration, cross-border collaboration in this area has been actively sought.

During a trial period, the device used at Wittlich Prison will be made available to the Luxembourg Prison Administration in order to check whether this device is suitable for the specific needs of the Grand Duchy in this area.