A former registered nurse and a former security guard at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown were sentenced to federal prison on Thursday, November 12, for their roles in a scheme that moved hashish, codeine, marijuana and cellphones into the privately run prison, according to reporting by cleveland.com. Brenda Dixson, the security guard, was sentenced to two years in prison, and Jodi Johnson, the registered nurse, received an 18-month prison sentence.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Boyko handed down both sentences, cleveland.com reported. Dixson was also fined $1,000 and ordered to serve three years of post-prison supervision. Johnson received two years of supervision to follow her time in custody. The sentences close the criminal cases against the pair, who were charged in October 2025 in federal court in Youngstown with possession with intent to distribute drugs and smuggling contraband into the facility.
The Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, known as NEOCC, is operated by Tennessee-based CoreCivic and houses federal pretrial detainees along with state prisoners, according to cleveland.com. Because the facility holds people awaiting federal proceedings as well as sentenced inmates, contraband moving through its gates is treated as a federal matter, and this case was investigated by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force working alongside a prison investigator.
According to cleveland.com, authorities said Johnson hid drugs inside food and drink containers, while Dixson, working the security checkpoint, allowed her to pass through screening without reporting irregularities the scan detected. Investigators began surveillance after receiving a tip about the smuggling operation, and agents watched Johnson carry a clear bag containing boxes of food and energy drink containers through the checkpoint, where Dixson scanned the bag, performed a pat-down and waved her through.
When DEA agents moved in, cleveland.com reported, they found one pound of hashish, 66 grams of codeine and about a quarter-pound of marijuana, along with seven cellphone chargers and four vape cartridges. Contraband cellphones are a persistent concern inside prisons because they can be used to coordinate activity outside the walls, and chargers and vape cartridges are traded as currency inside facilities.
Johnson told investigators she had been smuggling drugs into the prison since February 2025 to make money and was paid through Apple Pay, according to cleveland.com. Her Apple Pay account showed a balance of approximately $9,000, and she told investigators Dixson was the only person she worked with in the scheme. Those admissions, as reported by cleveland.com, describe an operation that ran for months before the surveillance ended it.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What is confirmed, through the sentences imposed in open court on Thursday, is the outcome for both women: prison terms, supervision to follow, and a fine for Dixson. What the reporting does not yet establish is when each woman will report to begin serving her sentence, or whether CoreCivic has changed screening procedures at the Youngstown facility in response to the case. No statement from the company was included in cleveland.com’s reporting on the sentencings.
The convictions are also not the first of their kind at the facility. Cleveland.com reported that the cases are the latest in a series federal prosecutors have brought involving smuggling at NEOCC: two guards were sentenced in 2023 for taking bribes from an inmate to smuggle drugs and other contraband into the prison, a nurse was sentenced that March for smuggling items in for a member of Cleveland’s 8AVE gang, and several members of the Fully Blooded Felons gang were convicted or pleaded guilty in smuggling cases as well.
That pattern is why a single checkpoint failure matters beyond one facility. Northeast Ohio courts continue to work through cases with prison and public-safety stakes, including a Cleveland man convicted in a 2025 Akron killing whose sentencing is set for November 17, and investigators are still working to determine what happened inside a North Royalton home where three people were found dead this week.
What happens next in the Youngstown cases is largely procedural: both women will serve their sentences under federal supervision terms set by Judge Boyko, and one related matter remains open. Earlier this month, cleveland.com reported, a food service employee at NEOCC who worked for Trinity Food Service was charged in federal court in Youngstown, accused of smuggling marijuana and tobacco into the prison as incentives for inmates who work with her in food service. That charge is an allegation, and her case is still pending.
Photo: Kasamias9, CC BY-SA 4.0