If working conditions on Texas' death row are tough, the pay can be even tougher.

Correctional officers start at about $26,000 a year to work in a dangerous environment, surrounded every workday by 350 condemned killers with nothing to lose.

Many correctional officers rent their homes, because they can't afford to own, according to interviews with officers and prison officials. And many are single parents with second jobs to make ends meet. The top of the correctional officer pay scale is about $34,600, after more than seven years on the job.

With Monday's bust of death row convict Richard Lee Tabler for reportedly possessing a cell phone that logged 2,800 calls in a month — with at least nine other death row inmates possibly making calls — state officials have been scrambling to lock down the system to impose a zero-tolerance policy on smuggled phones and other contraband.

Several guards reportedly are under investigation as a part of the inquiry.

"If someone is desperate to make ends meet and someone offers them $2,100 to smuggle in a cell phone, it's a hell of a temptation," said Brian Olsen, executive director of a labor union that represents some Texas correctional officers.

"If they can sneak something in for some money, a few will do it."

Corrections Maj. Joe Smith, a 22-year prison veteran who oversees death row, echoed the sentiment, noting that easily concealed cigarettes and other tobacco items can earn a dishonest guard $500 cash per trip.

"These death row offenders have the money to pay," Smith said. "It scares me every day. Every day we fight this battle."

Sen. John Whitmire, who called police after Tabler began calling him personally, said that contraband has gone unchecked far too long.

"I'm angry it's taken this long for the prison administration to deal with what is a very serious breach of security that's been known about for years," said Whitmire, D-Houston. "I don't think there's been any will to stop contraband in the past."

But Gov. Rick Perry and prison officials say things have changed. In ordering the lockdown, Perry imposed a zero-tolerance policy on all prison contraband — cell phones, narcotics, tobacco and other items.

Their target: Those prison employees who are smuggling.

Most prison officials agree the challenge of imposing the policy is formidable in a system that houses 155,000 inmates in 112 prisons and other lockups spread all across Texas. In the past year alone, investigators have seized more than 600 cell phones — 22 so far on death row.

The prison with the biggest problem, agency records show, is the 2,500-bed Stiles Unit in Beaumont, where 180 smuggled cell phones have been found this year alone. Last year, the haul was 88.

At Polunsky Unit, where death row is located, the take this year is 104.

At a privately run pre-parole center on a former airbase in Mineral Wells , which has pay phones for prisoners to use, the number is 123.

Also, officials said, motorists on the outside have thrown over the fence footballs loaded with phones, sacks filled with cartons of cigarettes, and even shot over arrows with tobacco products taped on them.

"There's a constant problem with contraband there," said John Moriarty, the prison system's independent inspector general who is responsible for investigating contraband cases.

"But we're not just working contraband in the system. We also have to work the homicides, the rapes, the assaults, all the other crimes. With limited resources, we can only do so much. Like the correctional staff, we're stretched thin."

Of the approximately 26,000 budgeted positions for correctional officers, the state is currently about 3,000 short, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The department has asked the Legislature to fund a 20-percent wage increase to address the gap.

In recent months, prison officials say, correctional officers across the system have been busted for trying to smuggle in cell phones, narcotics and a variety of other forbidden items. One guard was caught with tobacco-laden pouches taped on his arms and legs as he came to work, they said.

"It takes a small few to make a big problem," said Warden Tim Simmons, a 26-year prison veteran who is warden at Polunsky. "We've intercepted birthday cards with SIM (cell phone) cards and money" hidden inside the card.

Many of the cases are not prosecuted, records show. Most often, the officer is fired instead.

"They haven't been strict on contraband because if they were strict on contraband, they know the number of employees they'd have to sanction would be large," said Bill Habern, a Huntsville attorney who has represented both inmates and unincarcerated Texans on prison contraband charges. "It goes on because it's the easiest way to run the system."

Echoing the sentiments of others, Olsen and Smith agree that better searches at the prison doors and better pay for correctional officers would help.

"If you have professional pay levels, you can draw more professional people," Olsen said, applauding the proposed 20-percent wage hike. "The solution is now with the Legislature. No more pass the buck now."

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