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US Prisons Have a Cellphone Smuggling Problem (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes NBC:
Cellphones smuggled into prisons -- enabling inmates to order murders, plan escapes, deal drugs and extort money -- have become a scourge in a bloc of states where corrections officers annually confiscate as many as one for every three inmates... In South Carolina, prison officers have found and taken one phone for every three inmates, the highest rate in the country. In Oklahoma, it's one phone for every six prisoners, the nation's second-highest rate... Cellphones are prized because they allow inmates to avoid privatized jailhouse phone and visitation services that charge up to $15 for a two-minute call home to friends and family. "Inmates call their mothers like most of us do on holidays," said Dr. John Shaffer, former executive deputy secretary for the Pennsylvania Corrections Department.
But for some, the phones serve a darker purpose. "Most of these guys are just chitchatting with their girlfriends, but some of these guys are stone-hardened criminals running criminal enterprises," said Kevin Tamez of the MPM group, a litigation consulting firm that specializes in prison security... Meth rings operated by prisoners with cellphones, some with ties to prison gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Irish Mob Gang and the United Blood Nation, have been discovered in at least five Southern facilities. Phones have also played a role in breakouts, with one South Carolina inmate dialing up drone delivery of wire cutters and cash for his escape in July. Cellphones are so prevalent in the prison system, Tamez said, that "if you don't have them, you would look like a loser."
The article reports convicts have actually uploaded in-prison videos to Facebook Live and to Snapchat. "Georgia inmates used phones to take photos of themselves tying up or beating other prisoners, then texted the horrifying images to the victim's family and demanded cash."
But for some, the phones serve a darker purpose. "Most of these guys are just chitchatting with their girlfriends, but some of these guys are stone-hardened criminals running criminal enterprises," said Kevin Tamez of the MPM group, a litigation consulting firm that specializes in prison security... Meth rings operated by prisoners with cellphones, some with ties to prison gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Irish Mob Gang and the United Blood Nation, have been discovered in at least five Southern facilities. Phones have also played a role in breakouts, with one South Carolina inmate dialing up drone delivery of wire cutters and cash for his escape in July. Cellphones are so prevalent in the prison system, Tamez said, that "if you don't have them, you would look like a loser."
The article reports convicts have actually uploaded in-prison videos to Facebook Live and to Snapchat. "Georgia inmates used phones to take photos of themselves tying up or beating other prisoners, then texted the horrifying images to the victim's family and demanded cash."
as usual, management
Another way would be to pass legislation to require carriers to block prison locations from connecting to the towers, with a whitelist of IMEIs for prison staff.
This is what you get when you privatize prison system.
and in case you haven't heard yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Maybe not exactly the right tool, but something in that category. For some reason, the government can't figure out how to use Stingray properly and have a host of circuit court rulings against them.
In a prison, the cell phones of prisoners are contraband. A Stingray like device could be used for intercepting those and figuring out the rest of the criminal enterprises.
The BOP could also make cell phones contraband for the staff too, and solve a whole sorting problem.
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Or maybe put less people in prison? As a European I can not suppress the impression that the US is using its prison system as a giant rug under which to hide some structural problems in its society. Alas, I see the same tendency here in some political parties, so it is probably only a matter of time ... but one may hope as long as one can vote.
In the late 1960's and early '70's prisons were becoming alarmingly empty. Well in 1972 (sarcasm) good thing President Nixon came to the "rescue" starting the very expensive "War on Drugs," we pay taxes for. The prisons started to fill up again, mostly with people who could not afford a good attorney. - I would love to see an article explaining how we got to be the number 1 nation in imprisoning people. The over crowding that and systematic starvation. Cold and hot extremes they endure. How they now are making new laws to imprison more people because they have "Prisons for Profit", which are hungry for more prisoners. Forced labor. Forced payback on "rent" for your say. And we still pay taxes for private!! Also, how people get imprisoned for minor infractions like having as little 1 joint in their possession in some States.
Another way would be to pass legislation to require carriers to block prison locations from connecting to the towers, with a whitelist of IMEIs for prison staff.
Yet another way, (not to stop it so much as to make it less prevalent), would be to do away with the ridiculous, self-serving, and frankly lazy practice of private for-profit prisons. Fifteen bucks for a two-minute phone call? That's just fucking outrageous! At the root of all of this, is the undeniable fact that when you turn prisons into a profit centre, capitalism will guarantee that their population is ever-increasing; and if some, (or many), of those people don't belong there, well, that's just the price of 'progress' and 'security'.
Of course, maintaining this unfair and untenable situation is made much easier by the fact that the majority of the population is self-righteously happy with punishing those convicted of crimes, and doesn't care in the least about rehabilitating them.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Reducing the cost of using the prison phones to a reasonable amount would help.
Prisons consider phone calls to be a money fountain. Basically, they are squeezing money out of prisoners trying to keep connections with family.
Many many studies have shown that the single thing that is most important to reducing recidivism is that the prisoners have ties to family and community OUTSIDE of the people they meet in prison. So, basically, the main effect of high cost of phone calls home is to INCREASE crime.
The whole bit about criminals running criminal enterprises with cell phones is mostly a distraction. The prisons want to delete cell phones purely because their monopoly on phoning home makes them tons of cash. If criminals were running criminal enterprises on cell phones, the solution would be a wiretap.
from the article: Cellphones are prized because they allow inmates to avoid privatized jailhouse phone and visitation services that charge up to $15 for a two-minute call home to friends and family. "Inmates call their mothers like most of us do on holidays," said Dr. John Shaffer, former executive deputy secretary for the Pennsylvania Corrections Department.
As long as there's a profit to be turned from putting people in jail, guess what...more and more people will wind up in jail.
The world would be a better place if those turning a profit from incarcerating non-violent criminals were held accountable for the damage they've done to society and forced to spend the rest of their lives in the institutions they created.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Actually, I think there was a drive toward rehabilitation in prison from the 60's to the late 80's, especially at the federal level. They claimed three purposes of incarceration; the three R's: Restraint (I'm not robbing more banks while I'm locked up), Retribution (punishment to help victims feel closure and serve as a deterrent to other), Rehabilitation (changing me so I am less likely to break the law after my eventual release).
Restraint clearly works. I robbed 0 banks during the entire time I was in prison.
Retribution seems to work. I can't tell you how many people have told me they have always wanted to rob a bank but were too scared of the punishment.
Rehabilitation pretty much left the federal system in 1987. Reagan and a couple of Supreme Court decisions effectively removed both the expectation and the reality of rehabilitative efforts. They gutted the the programming available to inmates, which had been quite extensive in some places.