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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
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.
Cell phone jammers are illegal. Federal law, state law can't override it.
Granted, the law could be changed (with an exception added for cell phone jammers in jails), but it hasn't happened yet. It might soon, if there's enough of a cry out for it.
Because that would be a logical, one-shot solution that would end the problem. That's no good for a politician. They want an ongoing issue they can pull out from time to time, whenever they need a distraction. There's little profit for your buddies and political capital for yourself from solving problems; there's lots to be made from prolonging them.
They'll integrate the prison guards into the DHS and hire thousands more of them to look for cell phones before they'll do something as simple and effective as installing jammers.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Jammers? But that'll make them use other methods of communications which may be harder to tap, intercept or block on demand.
;). If you do it right, the phones will always use your towers in preference to others.
Why don't they just install cellphone towers specifically for prisons
If there are pesky laws against this maybe you could get away by having some "fine print" which "informs" the prisoners (who are unlikely to read it) that they are not allowed to use cellphones in the prison, and if they do, the comms may be tapped or even modified as the prison sees fit.
When opportunity knocks stop complaining about the noise.
"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.
A guard caught with a cell phone gets administrative punishment under union rules. A guard caught with drugs goes down for a felony and loses his job.
-=Maggie Leber=-
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!
Prisons have regular phones, that they charge exorbitant rates to use. This is about protecting a monopoly and gouging a segment of the population that nobody gives a damn about.
What about cellphone detectors. I’m sure there is a technology that can detect and triangulate the radiation spewing from those things. And they are probably less illegal than jammers.
I suspect a lot of the stuff that gets smuggled into prisons comes from or is aided by underpaid prison staff (I really think it’s amazing how little they make considering the risk they take) either directly or indirectly. I don’t see how this kind of stuff could make it in, in the quantities that it does, without at least a little help. Even if you came up with a good technical way to stop the cellphone problem, all it takes is one guard to look the other way, and it’s defeated.
Then again I’ve never been to prison nor been a corrections officer... so I admit I have no clue how stuff actually works there.
They kinda do that here in Florida. Some prisons have their own microcell that grabs the signal from any cell phone in use on the prison grounds. If you aren't using an authorized phone, the signal doesn't go out & the guards are alerted.
There is a war going on for your mind.
the real problem, actually, is that the existing, legal phone system inside armerica's prisons is grossly corrupt. prison phone system providers are given a monopoly, charge exorbitant rates (a 630% markup over normal residential prices) and then actually kickback money to prison officials and politicians to keep their sweet contracts (57.5% of profits to the state of new york, for example).
my source for these numbers is here
add to that the fact that even if an inmate can get a prison job, the wages are usually in the dollar-or-less per hour range, sometimes as low as 20c/hr, and you have a situation where the legal phone system is financially unusable. the result is that the economic impulse to get a black market cellphone -- even a $200 one -- is strong.
if america really wanted to stop black market cellphones, they'd cancel verizon's prison phone contract and offer reasonably-priced access to phone systems to inmates.
my source for the prison wages info is: here
Creating monsters out of somewhat dysfunctional people only makes the problem worse. "Tough on crime" is an intellectually lazy approach that doesn't help anyone but private prison operators.
Use a jammer, go to jail. Ironic isn't it. http://wireless.fcc.gov/services/index.htm?job=operations_2&id=cellular
OK so technically you could get a permit, but you have to wonder if prisons are relying on cellular for official communications at this point. It's become so cheap and prevalent - cellular is replacing radio for a lot of field operations comms requirements these days. (No I can't cite anything beyond what I see at my own job where some of the field crews are cellphone only at this point.) Anyway, if that is the case and prisons are using cellular for their own comms - jamming the prisoner comms becomes problematic and probably creates a safety issue for employees.