BANGOR – Penobscot County grand jurors could take up on Monday the case of a county jail inmate and his girlfriend who allegedly tried to smuggle prescription drugs into the jail earlier this month.

The inmate’s girlfriend passed eight prescription pills including Vicodin hidden in her belt buckle to the inmate during an April 18 visitation, Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross said Tuesday.

But Penobscot County authorities were prepared, having been tipped off by Bangor police investigators in the weeks before about the smuggling efforts and had an investigation under way, Ross told Penobscot County commissioners.

Ross acknowledged the difficulty of preventing contraband from entering the jail, but said that jail officials have done what they can to intercede.

“It’s a constant battle to try to keep the innovative, the desperate people from getting drugs into the jail,” Ross told the commissioners.

Ross said that, in this latest case, county detectives and jail officials listened to taped conversations and learned about the specifics of the transfer. The drug exchange was caught on surveillance cameras already in place in the visiting areas. Notices are in place to let inmates know that the conversations and visits are recorded, Ross said.

As well as catching the two in the act, the investigation uncovered previous attempts by the inmate to smuggle drugs into the facility, Ross said.

Ross said other people in addition to the couple may be charged in the incident and it appeared that some of the pills were going to be sold or exchanged in the jail to other inmates.

Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy said that no formal complaints have been filed yet but that grand jurors could hear the case when they meet on Monday.

The sting has prompted changes in jail procedures for visits, although Ross said the jail still intends to allow some physical contact. Ross said the brief embrace or contact between loved ones can have a positive effect on inmates.

“That’s an important part of their reintegration and I don’t want to interfere with that,” he said.

Now during visits, inmates and their visitors will have assigned seats to sit in, compared to being allowed to sit anywhere in the visitation room. Visitors are prohibited from passing anything during the visit, with violators subject to arrest.

Physical contact will be restricted to the last moments of the visit, and the inmate will be immediately searched for contraband, sharply reducing the time the inmate could have to hide something.

“We believe that we’ve just taken another big step at closing a potential area” of smuggling contraband into the jail, Ross said.

The commissioners said they had been made aware of the smuggling investigation and supported the changes, which they saw as balancing the need for contact with the need to curb contraband.