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Local Police Want To Jam Wireless Signals
The Washington Post is reporting on the growing pressure from state and local law enforcement agencies for permission to jam wireless signals the way the Secret Service and the FBI can. Officials especially want to be able to drop a no-call blanket over local prisons around the country from time to time. "...jamming remains strictly illegal for state and local agencies. Federal officials barely acknowledge that they use it inside the United States, and the few federal agencies that can jam signals usually must seek a legal waiver first. The quest to expand the technology has invigorated a debate about how widely jamming should be allowed and whether its value as a common crime-fighting strategy outweighs its downsides, including restricting the constant access to the airwaves that Americans have come to expect. ... Critics warn of another potential problem, 'friendly fire,' when one agency inadvertently jams another's access to the airwaves, posing a safety hazard in an emergency. [CTIA spokesman Joe] Farren said there are 'smarter, better and safer alternatives,' such as stopping inmates from getting smuggled cellphones in the first place or pinpointing signals from unauthorized callers."
Question: How the hell do you smuggle a cell phone into prison? Answer: You don't. You bribe/threaten a guard. Sure, you can smuggle a cell phone into prison. At our local county jail, the inmates tend a three-acre garden during the summer. There's no fence around it, no bars, no watch towers. Anybody could drop a cell phone or a stash of drugs into a carved-out watermelon, and it's trotted into the prison kitchen the next day. Three inmates work at the animal shelter next door as well. While the inmates hose out the kennels, people off the street walk up and down looking at animals. How can the shelter workers tell that one of the visitors isn't the inmate's cousin, dropping off a bag of drugs? It's laughably easy to smuggle things into prison, especially minimum-security ones with work-release programs.
I wonder:
Median annual earnings of correctional officers and jailers were $35,760 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $28,320 and $46,500. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $23,600, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $58,580. Median annual earnings in the public sector were $47,750 in the Federal Government, $36,140 in State government, and $34,820 in local government. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the starting salary for Federal correctional officers was $28,862 a year in 2007. Occupational Outlook Handbook 2008-2009: Correctional Officers
"They're hiring 18-year-olds two months out of high school. "We've got officers who are 70 years old, senior citizens. That's a security risk." Physical fitness standards have been lowered, with overweight, out-of-shape correctional officers in the system. Many Texans support keeping prisons as inhospitable as possible because they're supposed to be about punishment, but those same poor conditions (think double shifts with no air conditioning in the Texas summer heat) combine with low pay to make it nearly impossible to staff current prisons in their existing, mostly rural locations. Texas prison guard salary ranks 47th among states [Apr 7, 2008]
Trinity Services Group is the second food services company to tell the Department of Corrections it can't afford to keep feeding prisoners. The company said it's losing $100,000 a month on its contract to feed inmates in the north-central part of the state and at three prisons in South Florida. The company, which was paid $21-million last fiscal year, said it's losing money because food and fuel costs are rising at the rate of 9 percent, far in excess of the 2 percent inflation cushion allowed in its state contract. Trinity is paid 88 cents for every meal served. Oldsmar company opts out of prison food service [Sept 19, 2008]