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State Prison Officials Blame An Escape On Drones And Cellphones (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes USA Today:
A fugitive South Carolina inmate recaptured in Texas this week had chopped his way through a prison fence using wire cutters apparently dropped by a drone, prison officials said Friday. Jimmy Causey, 46, fled the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, S.C., on the evening of July 4th after leaving a paper mache doll in his bed to fool guards into thinking he was asleep. He was not discovered missing until Wednesday afternoon. Causey was captured early Friday 1,200 miles away in a motel in Austin by Texas Rangers acting on a tip, WLTX-TV reported... "We believe a drone was used to fly in the tools that allow(ed) him to escape," South Carolina Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said...
Stirling said prison officials are investigating the performance by prison guards that night but pointed to cellphones and drones as the main problem. The director said he and other officials have sought federal help for years to combat the use of drones to drop contraband into prison. "It's a simple fix," Stirling said. "Allow us to block the signal... They are physically incarcerated, but they are not virtually incarcerated."
It's the second time the same convict escaped from South Carolina's maximum security prison -- albeit the first time he's (allegedly) used a drone. The state's Law Enforcement Division Chief also complains that the federal government still prohibits state corrections officials from blocking cellphones, and "as long as cellphones continue to be utilized by inmates in prisons we're going to have things like this -- we're going to have very well-planned escapes..."
Stirling said prison officials are investigating the performance by prison guards that night but pointed to cellphones and drones as the main problem. The director said he and other officials have sought federal help for years to combat the use of drones to drop contraband into prison. "It's a simple fix," Stirling said. "Allow us to block the signal... They are physically incarcerated, but they are not virtually incarcerated."
It's the second time the same convict escaped from South Carolina's maximum security prison -- albeit the first time he's (allegedly) used a drone. The state's Law Enforcement Division Chief also complains that the federal government still prohibits state corrections officials from blocking cellphones, and "as long as cellphones continue to be utilized by inmates in prisons we're going to have things like this -- we're going to have very well-planned escapes..."
FTFS - "The state's Law Enforcement Division Chief also complains that the federal government still prohibits state corrections officials from blocking cellphones"
https://www.fcc.gov/general/jamming-cell-phones-and-gps-equipment-against-law
Justice Dept rescinds order phasing out private prisons. Feb 23.
I don't understand how that's supposed to address the drone problem. So you can't fly under manual control? Fine, fly to GPS coordinates and do everything automatically. A prison yard isn't exactly a small target, you don't need precision. Are they planning to jam GPS too? Fine, you're not talking a long flight, inertial guidance on a calm day should do it.
With the amount of money involved in drug smuggling, I don't think any of this poses a hindrance except to amateurs with no connections. So unless they're planning to HERF or shoot drones out of the sky...
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
Notice the title says "Blame". I think that is the perfect word. Rather than accepting responsibility, they are blaming technology. If an escape happens it's the people securing the facilities fault, whether they use a pitchfork or a drone.
Sent from my TARDIS
If a drone can fly over the fence and drop tools to a prisoner, how intrinsically different is that than basically THROWING the tools over the fence?
Sure the drone is a lot more accurate, but heck of a lot noisier too.
I smell excuse-hunting here; this guy already escaped them once (how is it that every jackass with a DWI can get an ankle monitor, yet a prisoner IDENTIFIED as a successful escapee doesn't have one?). On the second escape, they're looking harder to CYA than to find him.
-Styopa
Or maybe you wiped out your own karma...if you ever had any:
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Now as I've been on a brief review of your comments, I did see several that were actually well thought out contributions to discussion. However, any positive you have is drowned out by the anti-Semitic rants you go on. Obviously you believe that as firmly as you believe in what you put in some of your more insightful, but that definitely is the source of your karmic deficit.
Look, I share your concern about for-profit prisons and I recently went to a conference that was largely about the issue. They should be abolished. However, they can also be a red herring here. According to Pew:
In 2015, just 8% of the nearly 1.53 million state and federal prisoners in the U.S. were in private facilities, up slightly from 5% in 1999. (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private-prison-population-has-declined-in-recent-years/)
For-profit prisons represent a very tiny portion of the overall prison system, and so while they may be a symptom of the deeper problems with the system overall, they are not in and of themselves the cause. We can abolish these for-profit prisons, but just like taking cough medicine, it will not do away with the deeper causes of the problem.
Besides that, the actual prison mentioned in the abstract is not a for-profit prison, but a maximum security state-run prison.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.