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Prison Cell Phone Smuggling Out of Control
Hugh Pickens writes writes "KCRA reports that the number of contraband cell phones discovered in California state prisons has exploded as prison guards, staff and vendors are cashing in on smuggled phones that can fetch between $200 and $800. Although the large majority of inmates are using the phones to stay in contact with loved ones, there have been documented cases of escape attempts, drug deals and conference calls coordinated via smuggled cell phones. 'The potential is there for the worst kind of activity,' says Folsom Prison Warden Rick Hill. Even Charles Manson has been caught with a cellphone smuggled to him. 'We know the problem is out of control,' says State Senator Alex Padilla, who has proposed making such smuggling illegal in hopes of stopping the continued rise of contraband cell phones in prison."
Wait... does this mean that it's not illegal to smuggle certain things into prisons?
Maybe you'll return to Minagua, You could go unnoticed in such a place. -FZ
Why not just install cell phone jammers in all prisons? Is there honestly any "right" to have cell phone signal in the prison?.
Nothing more inspiring than playing angry birds while stuck in a cell...
I'm sure legislation will fix the problem... after all, inmates are in jail because they FOLLOW laws! Politicians are morons.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
The potential is there for the worst kind of activity,' says Folsom Prison Warden Rick Hill
Well, I guess someone could use one to trigger a release of lethal bacteria into the air killing us all. I expect mostly they're being used for sub-worst kinds of activity though.
If they think that cell phones are a problem, they need to consider this situation carefully. Most/all cellphones are much larger than say a balloon filled with heroin. If they think that a cellphone is a "problem" and smuggling in a handheld device is easy, I wonder what they think of the drug situation. Also, the profit margin on bringing in a walnut-sized heroin balloon is orders of magnitude more profitable.
Or.... don't let the signal from the towers penetrate to the prison? Surely the guards can do without when they're on duty?
We have the highest paid prison guard union in the country and it still isn't enough.
Wouldn't it be simpler to make cell phone useless within the prison perimeter? I know there would be technical challenges to doing that, and prison staff would have to do without too (they can use the regular phones), but it might be easier. It would probably be more effective than "making them illegal" (like that will stop people already in jail).
Another step would be to make regular phone easier and less restricted (i.e. more phones/hours), albeit still monitored. Then there would be less reason for having a cell phone to "stay in contact with loved ones".
Is it not possible to jam the cell phone signals? And anyway, the "cell" base station near the prison can listen to the calls, yeah?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage wouldn't be too hard to stop them from being effective ...
How about installing some 'regular' phones that inmates can use, but monitor all calls? "Hi honey, I miss, how're the kids?" calls are ignored/allowed, but "I need you to go WHACK that bitch!" calls result in punishment...
Install jammers (probably with a whitelist of allowed phones) or STFU.
WTF? I thought smuggling in even a bag of chips into a prison was illegal.
"there have been documented cases of escape attempts, drug deals and conference calls coordinated via smuggled cell phones."
Not conference calls! Anything but that! Isn't it bad enough that they're in jail? Now they're being subjected to conference calls. That is surely a violation of an inmate's rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
So now not only are we having our tax dollars wasted on a "war on drugs" we're also going to start a new "war on cellphones (in prison)".
Sounds absolutely fabulous
Stop screwing prisoners who try to use the prison phone to contact loved ones.
Prisons have been seeing their phones as a profit center lately, charging a dollar per minute or more to contact loved ones. And loved ones can't call the prisoner -- the prisoner has to make the call. And often they can't call cell phones, only land lines -- but not everybody has a land line any more.
Make the prices more reasonable, drop the "no cell phones" thing, and have some way for people to call the prisoners (or at least tell them to call home beyond sending them a letter) and the demand for cell phones will drop.
Beyond that, simply get a scanner that detects the frequencies used by cell phones, install a few of them around the prison, and when they go off if the system is properly designed it could tell a guard immediately and tell them approximately where the phone is in the jail.
A thought:
Stop making it difficult and expensive for inmates to make regular phone calls. Then the only people left wanting cell phones will be those who want it for criminal activities, which will make your investigations more effective (even if they are successful less often).
In addition, though I'm no economist, I have to wonder if that wouldn't cause the remaining cell phone prices to go up, hopefully out of the accessibility range of at least a few people who would use them for criminal purposes (discounting the idea that contacting your family in a manner not approved by the prison might be illegal).
That's the part I care about. Now, the rant:
As someone living in the U.S., I think we need a dialogue on what we believe prison should be *for*, especially if there's some data to back up various methods in light of our desired goals. For example, we know that there is a high rate of re-offence among people who have been in prison. How does restricting contact among family and friends affect that? Does it prevent the inmate from seeking connections anywhere but among fellow criminals? Does having access raise people's sense of injustice and make them more likely to re-offend? Is there an interaction between this and some other social factor?
This dialogue needs to extend to treatment of prisoners. What do we really want the outcome to be? Is it overall better for our society to focus on discouraging people to go to prison, rehabilitation once they are there, or a combination (and in what proportions?).
Perhaps most importantly, the dialogue needs to contain the topic of whether the current system is working, and if the outcomes we get are on par with our desires and what we see in other countries.
m!
I think the government should not try to stop these smuggled cell phones. Instead it should set up a cell tower and capture all communications. Phones registered to prison guards and verified may be exempted from this surveillance. Knowing how dumb criminals are, we are sure to gather tons of incriminating evidence even if they know they are being monitored.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Install signal jammers? Will probably cost much less than trying to stop the smugling...
After all ... it's called a cell phone ...
The problem is, what happens if someone else (not a prisoner, not a guard) is near the facility and their phone starts communicating with the prison's tower? Monitoring their conversation would be an inadvertent violation of their rights. There would be a great potential for liability, right down to the point where people would *try* to make this happen just so they could sue.
Jam wifi & cellphone frequencies or put material on the outer walls to not allow the frequencies in.
Well, I hear that train a-comin, it's rollin' around the bend, and I ain't seen the sunsh......
Oh, hang on a sec, I need to take this.
First they take away my Dungeons and Dragons and now it's my Cellphone. What next discourage urban exploration on prison grounds?
How about they jam cell frequencies inside the prison. Don't they do that is some movie theatres?
I don't know what the relevant difference is between Texas and North Dakota, but given the murder rates are anti-correlated with the harshness of the penalties it seems unlikely that the two are related at all.
The "relevant difference" is blatantly obvious here, and I know this is going to sound racist as hell but it's the cold harsh truth.
Texas has large concentrated population centers (D/FW, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Austin) that are full of Black and Mexican gangs whose entire world is centered around violence. How many big cities full of Bloods, Crips, MS13 and Nortenos are there in North Dakota?
It is opportunity not a problem, you have convicted people that are using a phone. Put a BTS in a prison and scramble all other signals. You can record and listen to every conversation.
Intercept call - prevent next crime - simple!
Cell towers can detect the distance of the phone to them and reject the call. Put it in the centre of the prison, and ensure that the call rejection happens if the phone is off the property. Yes, there'll be a few dead spots. It's prison. Not a funfair.
They could use a low level microwave emission devices tuned to be optimally absorbed by cell phones antennae to purge each cell block and require prisoners to walk through a field or choose to remove all clothes which will exposed and to submit to a cavity search. Visitors can be asked to pass through a field or they will need to stay behind glass during visits. The devices would be placed at various passages to make it harder for such items to move. The electronics in phones would be destroyed by such a device while not affecting a person or most ordinary items in a cell, anything special that might be prone to react like Televisions, can always be taken out examined and returned. This technology would burn antennae they cannot protect the phones because in so doing you block its reception so using spot scans means at some point they will be fried. In addition, the protective devices they would need to make would scream on metal detectors so they could not hide them in cells easily.
doesn't everyone remember how the cellphone companies were able to locate cellphones in the rubble of 9/11, even while they were turned off? Maybe bring some of that tech into play?
This cries out for prisons setting up open source GSM cells.
Now to find a CDMA solution. That, they may have to rely on the commercial manufacturers, but with a bit of work and some money, prisons could run their own cell networks and if nothing else listen in on the inmates' plans. Could be worse. Actually, it IS worse.
We can't seem to keep them out of the prisons, so just subvert them. I know this continues a war of escalation, but that's inevitable.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Being in prison is being isolated from the rest of the society. This is the purpose : if you don't want to be isolated from the rest of the society, especially your loved ones, don't break the law.
The summary and TFA refer to smuggling cell phones which is techincally correct. It is currently a crime for inmates to possess a cell phone and it is a crime to provide an inmate with a cell phone.
However, the proposed bill/law would make is a crime for ANYBODY to possess a phone inside of a California Department of Corrections facility. This is a huge difference for prison employees. Guards, nurses, adminstrators, maintainence, possibly even delivery drivers will not longer be allowed to carry personal cell phones.
We can agree that this is a problem. The soilution is up for debate. Employees and everyone entering a facility are already subject to TSA type searches, but personal cell phones are allowed. Even if they "banned" personal cell phones, I'm sure they would still get through just like the mass quantities of commercial alcohol and illicit drugs.
The most effective measure would be to install cell phone jammers in the facilities. Keep the human element out of the equation.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Post signs saying "phone conversations not allowed near prison." After that, the situation is much like a suspects friend borrowing his tapped phone to make an unrelated personal call - it'll be picked up and that's the way it goes. It should be deleted and be in-admissible for any unrelated case.
A few sensors, some triangulation... could easily locate a phone with sub-meter precision to determine if it's inside prison walls or not. Expensive, though.
as long as the prison/jail itself is profiting from the super over-inflated cost of making a phone call to family members.
yes, those services are outsourced to some shitty company, such as offenderconnect.com, but they give a cut back to the prison system.
not only is the service grossly bad, the restrictions and COST to make a call is outrageous.
i personally could afford the over priced calls.... but most of the families during "visiting hours" would tell me they couldn't afford to send money either for "Canteen Money" or Telephone Calls, not both.
When a coffee is like $7-$8 and Ramen Noodles are like $5, do you think they can afford a phone call for $3?
Just install a cell phone blocker. Problem solved. I'm sure the prison system can arrange an FCC exemption to use this. http://www.dealextreme.com/p/cell-phone-signal-blocker-40m-range-mountable-7709
This sounds like another law that will be too specific to cellphones. Do they have separate laws covering cakes, hacksaws, knives, guns, explosives, drugs, cigarettes, .... ?
How about one law that covers generic smuggling, which already sounds illegal?
why not just buid a sort of rf faraday cage around the larger prisons blocking and hence making the cell phone nothing more then a blocks of plastic?
Wouldn't it be easier and more cost effective to simply install cell phone jammers in the prisons?
I mean if the problem us the inmates using cell phones to communicate, why not just kill their signal so they become useless for that purpose?
Simply set up directional cellphone jammers around the facility? let the criminals have their phones , they wont work.
Or set up a pair of cellular towers like they do at big arenas, suddenly you are on XYZ network roaming where all calls get routed to the prison operator..
Prisoner 167.... bring me that phone.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Look, this isn't a problem in Russia. There is a very low recidivism rate because people actually fear going back to prison. Our prisons are just comfy free room and board by comparison.
Russian prison guards beat the prisoners, often for no serious reason. For example, a new guard gets a job and all the prisoners get beaten as a way of introducing the new guard. Russian prisons are thousands of miles from home out in Siberia, despite legislation to the contrary. Russian guards assign some prisoners the job of keeping order in exchange for better treatment. If one of these prisoners gets killed, his killer often replaces him. Prison is normally not heated enough. The food is truly crap.
Our prison just isn't prison. It's almost house arrest, but in a hotel with TV and video games. We even offer fun education. Going back to prison just isn't terrifying.
Just write legislation saying all cellphone signals to or from prisons are monitored. The legal precedent is easy: all prison mail is subject to inspection. Then you can not only catch idiots ordering hits or whatever, you can profile the guy behind bars: his contacts and associates. Useful information if he is a recidivist. Why jam useful criminal information?
It's the same problem with cracking down in child pornography: it doesn't actually stop it. Instead, let it flow freely. And now you have easy way to catch creators and distributors.
Real criminal investigation is not about cracking skulls, its about watching and learning. So you need a giant honeypot. So let the honeypot naturally grow, and catch the flies that fall in. Criminals are human, they make mistakes. Give them opportunities to make mistakes. If they freely use cell phones in prison, they will screw up, eventually, and maybe in subtle ways they don't even realize.
Real punishment is not about being tough on criminals, its about monitoring. If someone predisposed to criminal activity think they can get away with shit, they'll do it. Opportunity. But if someone is watching, they'll think twice. That's psychologically rehabilitative, right there.
A lot of us aren't criminals simply because we have a little voice in our head, from good parenting and empathy: "if you do that, someone will be badly hurt," or even more self-interested: "if you do that, they'll catch you." Criminals are usually just dumb, or people not dumb, but lacking that little voice in their head that makes them act responsibly. To rehabilitate such individuals, you need to provide that voice for them, not just sit on them in prison. So you monitor them, tell them when they are screwing up. Pretty soon, they'll get the knack, and develop their own little voice, if they are capable of being rehabilitated at all (and if not, by monitoring them, you have a good idea of where they might be when they screw up again: win-win).
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We even have a slang term for the preferred method of concealment - the Chatham Pocket.
cogito ergo sig...
And then the prison guard, for a hefty fee, rents his extra SIM card to the drug kingpin who wants to make a deal...
It a shitty Job with a lot of stress and weird times. Train and pay the guards well. Establish the right culture there.
That leaves a trail. Eventually if the drug kingpin is ever caught with the registered SIM of a prison guard with him, the guard goes into the slammer. No they would not risk it. Right now they slip in a phone for a fee and there is no spoor leading back to the crooked guard. That is what tempts them. Create a trail, most guards would not risk providing a SIM registered to them to a drug kingpin.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yes, there are even highways that run close to the prisons. Notices could be posted saying, "cellphones will be monitored near prisons, unless registered" and we could create laws specifically enabling the prisons to do it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
....they are intelligent ones. We need to remember that those that could implement a solution (previously mentioned: jammers, cheaper out-bound calls, monitoring of cell-phone bands,etc.), don't even have the mental capacity to conjure them up. Instead, they will just continue to waste the time of our government body [when it should be focused on the well-being of its citizens] on proposed laws which would "making such smuggling illegal". We need to cut the 'fat' out of the government, and replace them with engineers.
Plan A: make a rule that prisoners aren't allowed to have cell phones
ok that didn't work. They're already in prison, some for life, with little to lose if they get caught with a cell phone
Plan B: change the rule to a law
how is that going to affect the problem discovered with Plan A?
Seeing as people are willing to smuggle drugs/weapons/cell phones into prisons in their body cavities, you're not going to have an easy time stopping them from coming in. Seeing as they have little or nothing to lose by getting caught there's little deterrent in catching prisoners with contraband. If you can't stop them from getting them, can't discourage them from having them, the only solution is to make it less worth having them. This can be done one of two ways. The first is to reduce their usability, as many above have discussed, using faraday cages and jammers. I'm rather amazed that a cell phone works in a prison to begin with, with all the steel bars. But they probably get used out in the courtyard etc as law demands they get regular fresh air. Can't easily put a cage over the courtyard, and jammers are illegal on a federal level so that's out.
The other option, we'll call it Plan C, is to get so good at quickly catching someone with a cell phone that it gets taken away so fast that it no longer is worth the effort to get it in the first place. Either the cost is too high or the sanctions (solitary confinement etc) become a bad trade. Equipment to detect cell phones isn't that expensive. Metal detectors at the limited number of doors to the courtyards where the cell phones will work wouldn't break the bank ether. A few sets of RF triangulating hardware would then very quickly start locating places indoors that cell phones were still usable. Placing a cheap static RF alarm in those rooms that goes off when a cell phone is used within 30 feet of it closes the last of the gaps.
One of the fundamental problems the prisons are probably having here is that there will be a few guards that are SELLING cell phones the inmates. That's another problem that has to be handled by other means.
I personally don't see why a prison cell needs to have an AC outlet. They're like a hotel nowadays. But that's another rant in itself. If they had no place to charge the cell phones the problem wouldn't be a tenth of what it is now. People are thinking about smuggling of cell phones, not many are considering the AC adapters also have to be smuggled in. How any of this gets past metal detectors at the door is also amazing. (again getting back to corrupt guards)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Just to put cellphone signal jammer, it's low cost solution and work very well.
Radius of 40 meters (10 watts) are 160$, just to put some in each prison.
There are plenty of products out there than can dampen cell phone coverage, why not just install those and just eliminate the issue?
So, they want to make it *illegal* to smuggle cell phones. Into a PRISON.
This idiot senator apparently hasn't figured out that the reason these people are in prison in the first place is that they did something ILLEGAL. Hell of a deterrent there. What are they gonna do? lock them up?
Surely directional antennas could make this a very limited possibility. Ie, antennas on 1 or 2 corners with around a 90 degree radiation pattern. Aimed in and down. Bonus points for doing something like comparing a phones signal strength as seen by both towers to do rough triangulation and know if its inside the target zone.
Jam the cellphones within prison/jail grounds. Problem solved.
That reminds me. I was at a hospital in the middle of a city. I pull out my cell phone and it shows "roaming". Walk out of the building and into the parking lot and the "roaming" icon goes away.
Do they do anything special to discourage cell phone use at hospital?
In Mexico, where I live, inmates having cellphones is a huge problem because they use it to commit more crimes. Not only do they do their old drug-related deals via phone from the "safety" of jail, but they actually got creative a few years ago.
You will receive a phone call and they'll tell you that it's Captain Gonzalez (or whatever) from the Federal Police. They caught your niece (sometimes they even tell you the name of your niece, sometimes they just say niece) with drugs and unless you are willing to pay the Captain 5k pesos to let it go, she'll wind up in jail for years. Or they tell you they have your cousin, that was trying to cross the border into the US illegally and they'll have him jailed unless you pay up.
Sometimes they wouldn't even pretend to be anything and just be straightforward about it: "We know you live at ADDRESS and your wife is NAME and you have 2 daughters who attend SCHOOL from SCHEDULE. If you don't deposit 10k pesos in my account, you will regret it".
Most people payed up out of fear. It's easy enough to prove that your cousin or niece is free and about, but many people didn't do it. They just paid. My grandmather was victim of such a call, twoce. She didn't actually pay because my mother told her it was a scam, but that didn't remove the fear out of my grandma and she doesn't pick up the phone anymore.
It took only a short while for police to realize that most of these calls (which were really common up until a few months ago, probably because people now know about them and just ignore them) came from prisons, with smuggled cell phones. Absurd measures were taken but of course they didn't work. Now the calls have ceased, I believe, but just because people's awareness of the issue.
So yeah, inmates having cellphones IS dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.
I'd have less sympathy for smuggling in cellphones if the prison system itself wasn't set up to make a big profit... but it is.
About seven years ago, I knew someone in jail in Florida. The way they could call out was:
a) have someone outside pay money to a private company that
the jail had designated as their carrier, including a fee
b) the prisoner could *only* call one number, and that did *not*
include cellphones, or work, it had to be a home number.
Note, of course, that you can't call in. From what I was told, this kept many in there from having any contact with the outside world, one fact among many that contributed to recidivism: they loose contact with everyone, even their kids.
And this is the the state that alleges it believes in free enterprise, etc.
mark
From the article and summary: "'The potential is there for the worst kind of activity,' says Folsom Prison Warden Rick Hill"
Really? A prison warden is using a truism to invoke fear? Of course there is *potential* for the worst kind of activity. There's also *potential* for the *best* kind of activity... like calling your lawyer for consultation because you've been wrongly convicted. Say what you want about the likelihood of the cell phones being used for such things, but the point is that taken a prison warden's input on the danger of any prisoner activity is pretty silly.
Why don't we take a video game approach to this?
(1) Evaluate the bug exploit
(2) Find out why people are exploiting the bug
(3) Analyze current systems and check to see if official methods can be implemented to allow for controlled and sanctioned functions.
(4) Implement such sanctioned functions.
(5) Eliminate bug and institute severe penalties for those using a similar bug to a similar end.
Always analyze your own system first to see if you can prevent the need for crime/exploiting. Translated for the prison situations:
(1) People are smuggling in phones through orifices, mail, and corrupt delivery services.
(2) Why do people want phones? To talk to family, friends and lawyers? To participate in crime?
(3) Can additional phones and phone time be allowed? Would it be beneficial to rehabilitation (behavioral and addiction). Could there be exploits to this and how can they be prevented?
(4) Implement workable ideas, measure results.
(5) Severely punish anyone with a smuggled cell-phone.
"there have been documented cases of escape attempts"
Wow, really? Last time it was cameras and now they have built-in picks and shovels? Cell phones are sure getting more and more like swiss army knives with every passing day...
~Syberz
With the method that many items are smuggled into prisons I sure wouldn't be holding it up to my mouth to talk...
The problem would solve itself.
Why does a prison cell need a power outlet?
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
The population density of Singapore is 7,022 per square KILOMETER! The crime rate is one of the lowest in the world. Monaco has a population density of 39,217 per square mile. Their crime rate is low too,.You may not like the "racist" answers, but population density is just as big a pill to swallow. Culture and poverty (which are interrelated) has much more to do with it. Population density has about as much correlation as the phase of the moon.
Why is this even a issue? I can go buy a cell phone jammer from any number of places, and they are nto that expensive. If you really want to keep cell phones out of prisions, just put a jammer in each prison. If the phoes don't work, it really doesn't matter if anyone has them.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Have a different agency do random inspections of guards as they enter prisons. One shift a month at each prison, on average, decided by a random roll the dice by the agency, which should roll the dice after the guards have irrevocably reported for duty but before they enter the prison. Jail any guard bringing in contraband, and fire their superiors up the line. If the guard's union doesn't like it, this is the only situation I can think of where I believe a Reagan solution is appropriate.
Guards are supposed to be trusted. If they are crooked and supported by a union, dump the union.
Making jail easier, going soft on crime doesn't actually reduce crime either. You can't get further apart then Holland in how jails are run, with even rapists getting community service here and yet recidivism is still very high.
Crime happens everywhere, regardless of the systems in place. The system isn't there to stop criminals but to stop non-criminals from joining the criminals because they might as well. Shoot the first sheep over the dam and the rest won't follow. That is law and order. If the first guy to use the safety lane to bypass a traffic jam isn't ticketted, soon everyone else will follow.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
they'd build a separate network for the prison system and the prisons could offer the service to inmates who, at least according to Monopoly rules, can still transact money and therefore spend it on such a service. If not, then they could offer the service to the inmates' families and associates so they could keep in touch. Outside phones would have to be rendered useless in some way when brought inside the prison walls so that prisoners were forced to use the paid service. Then the prison could be free to control the service by listening/recording calls and web activity, limiting the times the service is available and how many minutes/kilobytes the inmates could use. They could even have another level of service for the prison guards and other workers.
I'm sure this brings up a whole new list of issues but I feel like there's an opportunity here. Anyone with deep pockets want to help me develop the first Con-Tel provider?
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...then they would find those phones. Airports have the solution. In the "old times" it was the metal detector, now it's the X-ray and body scanners.
problem solved. and don't ask me to shed a tear over inmates phone issues (they don't have the right to use a phone, btw). In order for them to actually get into a jail in california they really have to try.
Kill anyone holding, having or transporting ANYTHING prohibited. The person carrying or the intended recipient. Kill any
guard or screener who allows contraband into the prison. It will calm down shortly.
They are in prison mostly for a reason.
The powers that be are allowing this issue to continue, who knows why. It's as simple as strategically placing cell phone jammers throughout the prison. Rendering smuggled cellphones useless. If my college can afford to do that, I'm sure the state of california can follow suit.
In a prizon in Ireland one notorios prisoner rang in to a radio talkshow and there was hell to pay afterwards. The communications regulator would not allow a jammer as many prisons are located in built up areas and they would cause issues with regular users just outside the walls.
Instead they installed a cell tower inside the prison that captures all phones except those on the white list. There is still some problems in the fact that one prison is beside a hospital and at the entrance to A&E visitors cannot use their phones as the signal from the prizon reaches outside the walls. However at least the interference is limited to the frequencies that the prison mast uses. It does not generate noise on all frequencies.
However being a ham I can think of ways around the system but I'll not give the solutions!
Why don't they just install cell phone signal jammers where there shouldn't be any cell phones. Without the ability to use the phones, the market will just disappear.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
All you have to do is jam the cell phone frequencies and the problem is solved. Issue special cell phones to prison staff so they are unaffected.
Agreed. Why not just install landline/intercoms in all the cells?
The problem is that it is possible to buy phones which will let you select the tower you wish to connect to. Additionally, prisons are frequently close to cities (or a highway) so there will be more than prisoners and guards to worry about.
I hear the phone a comin'
It's ringin' 'round the cell,
but I ain't seen the iPhone,
Since I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Folsom Prison,
Android keeps draggin' on,
But that phone keeps a-ringin',
On down to my old Samsung.
A few years ago I got arrested because I didn't have ID on me it was in my truck, a few feet away, I told the cops "my ID is in my truck". She says "get in the back of my car". I said "why"? She proceeded to punch me several times in the stomach then another much larger cop bent me backwards over the roof of the car and then punched me in the face several times. I then demanded identification. Didn't get any but I got punched a few more times and forced into the back of the car. In the end I was charged with caring a concealed weapon it was a small knife with a belt clip clipped on the outside of my pocket. BTW I was on my way to my truck because I lost a contact and was going to get my glasses.
Being a Friday evening I was sent to the Remand centre to wait for a justice of the peace on Monday. While there my cell mate got cocaine from a guard btw the guard was clearly intoxicated on gin. My cell mate explained to me that their were more drugs inside of jail than out. And other than an odd occasion where someone got away with sticking drugs up their ass (the known drug user are probed by a guy with blue rubber gloves) the drugs come from the guards.
In the end the prosecutor would not take the case to trial after 8 months and 6 court appearances later due to the fact he had no case as I had done nothing wrong. But it did cost me $4000 for a lawyer.
The guy from the local telco, when they finally figured out that I had it (not sure how - had the ringer turned off and that was typical way they found extra phones) he actually complimented me on what had been done - and slapped my hand fairly hard.
Doing the same thing with cell technology, given the size of the various parts necessary and the fact of things like software radios and published standards and hacks, chances are that something that will communicate as a cell phone won't look anything like it soon.
Even scanning for a phone might not find them as it is possible to make one only respond to the network if/when a call is being made, rather than all the time.
Only some method of tapping/monitoring the cell sites will do much, if anything in this case - and of course there are always suitcase cell sites and such that can be aimed tightly from outside to allow calls despite such monitoring.
all in all - I fear they're in a losing cause
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Do the individual cells all have their own electrical outlet? That bothers me if true.
Most people don't sit back and contemplate violence or its probable consequence, but there was a paper written quite sometime ago that purported to show a correlation between inner and other directed aggression. The claim was made that humanity has a relatively constant rate of violence, but depending on your cultural influences, you are more or less likely to direct your aggressions inward, resulting in self-destructive behavior, or outward, resulting in criminal behaviors like assault or murder.
Although the author never proposed it, I believe this research could be used to support the sucession of Texas from the Union.
First, the rest of us should open the border by liberalizing international trade, then we subsidize super-Max prisons and elect a black man to the Presidency, then we redirect big-oil subsidies to a new energy economy... When the Cowboys lose the Superbowl and most Texans have become despondent, we invade and suppress their culture by outlawing pickup trucks and gentleman's clubs! (Hey, we're almost there!)
Si! Se Puede!
Just put up local cell phone nodes as part of the prison telephone system. Have local cells for GSM, Sprint, and Verizon. Route calls through the usual prison phone monitoring system, with the canned outgoing message "This call is from XXX prison". Sell phones in the commissary.
Prisons in urban areas might have some trouble with getting outside phones on their local cell, but most of the big prisons are in isolated areas.
Ok, these are CELL phones. Why aren't they allowed in CELLs? Where else are you going to use them?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I can understand why the prisons want the cell phones out, a cell phone can communicate sensitive data of how a prison is operating at any given time to an outsider, or other inmates. Thus greatly increasing the chance of escape. While i don't agree with the current system that places inmates in prison or the way prisons are currently managed, I do agree that inmates shouldn't have constant access with each other or the outside world. A prison guard shouldn't have one of these devices either, as a guard can be corrupted or planted just as easily as any other individual.
The simplest solution would be to simply jam the cell phone frequencies inside the prison, thus forcing all communication to be done via radio or land line. Sure this might cause some issues for lawyers, but they can just use prison land line phones. And sure some of the surrounding area will be effected as well. While they are at it they should also jam the 2.5ghz and 5ghz frequencies to prevent the use of internet enabled devices. But at least the problem will be quickly and effectively stopped.
then only outlaws will have cell phones in prisons.
Would it even be a technical 'femto cell'? Wouldn't 'most' prisons be large enough to get a full tower? Preferably one for each of the providers, of course.
Heck, with 3 towers and some extra logic, not only can you make sure the phones will connect to YOURS, you can restrict their logging to phones actually ON the prison grounds with a fair degree of accuracy.
I like this idea much more than jamming or trying to create farady cages.
I don't read AC A human right
"I don't know how he got my SIM. He must have stolen my phone and replaced it without my knowledge."
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
1. 10 year old Jimmy from down the street gets abducted, etc; and killed. and/or Home invasion gone wrong ends up with 3 dead and 1 in coma, and/or repeat offender drunk driver kills family of 5, etc; etc;...
2. Media frenzy begins highlighting said crimes, etc; etc.
3. Offenders/perps of said crimes are apprehended and convicted (on a good day)
4. Media frenzy continues, creating public outcry and pressure on DA's, Judges, etc;
5. Judges, politicians and/or prison-industrial complex create and perpetuate illogical and short-sighted "tough on crime" penal system.
6. More laws are passed every year criminalizing more and more behaviors, etc;
To quote Dave Mustaine:
"Kill a man and you're a murderer, kill many and you're a conqueror, kill them all, you're a god"
Wouldn't some short range cell jammers take care of this?
Now that GSM encryption is publicly breakable, could the calls from IMEI's not registered as belonging to the prison staff be automatically decrypted and recorded?
If they can't entirely prevent the problem of smuggling, at least this would help shed light on what was being discussed, and to whom. Perhaps useful at any parole board hearings?
RF jammers
A nice idea, but in addition to other criticisms presented in above comments this would not prevent a criminal from using pre-arranged codewords to communicate with outside affiliates. If I was a mob boss or drug kingpin I would probably take the time to work out such a system with my subordinates just in case, not sure if all criminals would go through the trouble of course.
And no vibrate mode.
With the ease that a cell jamming technology (of even a building sized area) can be purchased online, how is it that a government sanctioned agency can't install them in the prison blocks and simply end the problem?
Sigs? We don't need no steekin Sigs!
Nice try, you fake-linux Apologist, but the red Hat doesn't tip to anyone; so don't try your BSD-esque renice feature to ploy Linux users as apologizing to anyone with Windows. If ever there was a counterfeit fan needed, it would be in Hell to wave the flames of Theo the Rat since finding that FBI backdoor.
jafiwam, you are getting ahead of yourself like a progressive warden.
Prison prevents people from repaying or correcting the damages they cause, known as Corpus Delecti in Statutory Laws. Prison is a military operation, exposing more healthy individuals to disease and violence than anywhere else. Prison is better known as Abduction and involuntary Slavery; if someone is going to commit a violent activity, it is best mediated on the premise where it occurs by unteaching the State and other Romanized populous that the people have a right to open-carry their Arms.
When you talk about "re-habilitiation", I want you to shut your fat unbrushed stinking mouth because prison has no course in usefulness: the courts wouldn't allow anyone to post a promisory notice of some kind to mitigate the damages caused, and a Prison is the PUNITIVE un-Justice that continually mis-prisons someone from correcting a matter.
You forget, some things aren't a mistake: what you call Army is what I call a pack of wanton Murders and wanton Thieves trying to enslave anyone in their site. What you call a tax collecter is someone I think is nothing more than a lazy out-of-work buffoon more interested in keeping his standard of living while inflating government procedures to guaruntee their proprietary form of job security.
I've never met a drug-dealer that forces me to buy drugs, until the attornies hit me up on "thought" crimes to throw me into a psycological Ward kind of "prison" because I re-associated to people in a society that have my values rather than associate with a Governed society of domesticated Criminals composed of thugs taxing anyone that interacts with their Police and Franchizing so-to guarding their monopolies while requiring my standard of living in their control at all times.
I don't know about CA, but I have installed Cell Towers and MW Backbones in NYC prison's. Prisons make extra income renting tower space, most cell companies like this cause it is considered somewhat a secured facility over a reg shed tower sitting on an easily accessible roof.
Cell jamming in prisons isn't the answer and won't work. need another solution.
If they really wanna solve the problem they need to be getting the staff and sheriffs for this shit there the ones bringing the stuff in and making some good money out of it. block fucken signal of any cell phones perfect for inmates to escape.lol any solution is not gonna work as long as you have crooket sheriffs.duh!there the ones commiting a crime now, not the inmates shit alll theyre trying to do is stay ahead of there game lol
yea you think they might all be stupid but really some have been there a long while and had much time to read many more books than you have in a lifetime!!!!i thought of that one but people find out things and end up using that to there benefit!have you thought about that? nope im sure you didnt .streetsmart.
Why exempt the guards' phones when they're within the prison and (presumably) on the clock? Record and audit them like any others, additionally recording which registered phone made what conversations. Should cut down on guards renting their phones to prisoners, guard-phone SIMS being copied and given to prisoners, and guards' phones being stolen.
Guard wants to make a personal call on their break, well, the recording system deletes calls after howevermany weeks or months. Or they can step outside the prison and use an external cell tower. Or they can use a landline in the break room. Or they can wait until after their shift. Or someone can set up a nonmonitored microcell in a noise-damped Faraday room off (or being) the guards' break room and patch that through the prison PABX. People don't actually need to be 100% connected 24/7.
There are publicly available cell phone jammers easily available online. Hello prison officials, who cares if they get cell phones you should control the airwaves inside your environment.
but its capitalism, its a system of capitalism in the prison
WE MUST DEFEND IT AT ALL COSTS WHAT ARE THESE LAW MAKERS; COMMIES?
"Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."
its really hard to to set up straw men of people who get their point but yelling otherwise(lawyers and politicsoins)
warning pointless sig
Thinking the new yard hot commodity in addition to cigarettes will include http://www.faradaybag.com/ 's
Wonder if they are public or privately held, hehe