WARREN (AP) – The state is striving for greater efficiencies in all departments – including the four-legged helpers at the Maine State Prison.

It’s been several years since Maine State Prison guards needed bloodhounds to hunt down an escaped inmate, so prison officials are considering replacing them with dogs trained to deal with the daily problem of smugglers attempting to sneak drugs inside the prison walls.

The prison is considering replacing its two bloodhounds with German shepherds, a breed adept not only at detecting drugs but also controlling growing prison crowds, said Warden Jeffrey Merrill, chief administrative officer of the Maine State Prison.

“Our focus right now is more on drugs and drug detection, crowd control and facility searches,” Merrill said Thursday.

German shepherds would have been useful during Tuesday and Wednesday’s shuffling of some 200 inmates between the Maine State Prison and Maine Correctional Center in Windham, Merrill said.

Corrections officers had to request Maine State Police dogs to sweep cells during the transfer, which officials earlier this week attributed to overcrowding and the resulting difficulty of dealing with problem inmates.

If new dogs are dedicated to drug detection and crowd control, canines from other agencies would be brought to Warren in the event of an escape, Merrill said.

One of the prison’s bloodhounds, a 3-year-old male, likely would be donated to the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department, and the other dog to another law enforcement agency, Merrill said.

In both cases, the bloodhounds would see more action with other departments where they would be used regularly to track suspects and missing persons, he said.

In Penobscot County, the bloodhound would join a bomb-sniffing dog, a 6-year-old German shepherd named B.B., who was purchased and trained through an agreement with the Maine Air National Guard base in Bangor. The bloodhound, already fully trained, would be the department’s only tracking dog and would fall under a similar agreement.

The two dogs would share the rear cage of Deputy James Roy’s cruiser, so the only extra cost to the Sheriff’s Department would be food, said Penobscot County Sheriff Glen Ross. Purchasing and training a new dog would cost at least $5,000, he said.

While Roy hopes the two dogs get along, they don’t really have much of a choice, he said.

“They’ll tolerate each other,” Roy said.