Jailers off the hook

Charges have been dropped against two former Scott County jailers who pleaded guilty to providing whiskey and cigarettes to inmates. An appeals court has ruled the state’s contraband law doesn’t cover county jails. So 33-year-old Sophia Ball of East Moline and 30-year-old Heidi Jungwirth of Rock Island are off the hook. They had been arrested last October and charged with furnishing an intoxicant to jail inmates and failing to report possession of contraband. Last week’s opinion follows an appeal from a Cerro Gordo County Jail inmate who’d been charged with giving contraband to another inmate.