Confiscated food
© Jefferson County Sheriff's Office
An inmate from Dallas was busted this week sneaking out of a federal prison in Beaumont to get snacks, alcohol, tobacco and cooked food to take back into the facility.

Sheriff's deputies in Jefferson County learned recently that inmates were going out the back of the prison to neighboring land owned by a rancher and picking up contraband.

Deputies and U.S. marshals were lying in wait around 5:45 p.m. Wednesday and watched as someone drove a vehicle onto the property and left a large duffel bag.

At 7:30 p.m., an inmate left the prison grounds and picked up the bag. Deputies arrested the man - identified as Joshua Randall Hansen, 27, of Dallas - as he headed back to the prison.

The sheriff's office said the bag contained a bottle of whiskey, three bottles of brandy, dozens of packages of tobacco, packaged snacks, fruit and "a large amount of home cooked food."

Hansen, who is serving a 27-month sentence for conspiring to distribute a designer drug, now faces charges of escape and marijuana possession.

Authorities said that inmates escaping temporarily to bring contraband into the prison is a recurring problem - they've been walking off the grounds "pretty much since Day 1," sheriff's Deputy Marcus McLellan told the Beaumont Enterprise.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the facility houses 1,180 inmates in a high-security prison and 586 more at a minimum-security satellite camp.