Josephine McAllister, 34, allegedly smuggled the handgun into the metropolitan detention centre in Albuquerque and getting it past four prison guards.
Prison staff were alerted by another inmate that the gun was in a bin and this lead them to believe McAllister had concealed the weapon in her vagina.
During her arrest, for possession of stolen credit cards and resisting arrest in December, she told the police that she had the gun concealed in her waistband.
McAllister claimed she managed to keep hiding the gun in her waistband the entire time she was being processed by prison officers, despite being searched many times.
Officer Simon Drobik said: “We can only be so thorough, and that area is out of the question. We cannot search a body cavity.”
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