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US Lawmakers Propose Allowing Prisons To Jam Signals From Smuggled Cellphones (apnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Federal legislation proposed Thursday would give state prison officials the ability they have long sought to jam the signals of cellphones smuggled to inmates within their walls... The legislation could help provide a solution to a problem prison officials have said represents the top security threat to their institutions.
Corrections chiefs across the country have long argued for the ability to jam the signals, saying the phones -- smuggled into their institutions by the thousands, by visitors, errant employees, and even delivered by drone -- are dangerous because inmates use them to carry out crimes and plot violence both inside and outside prison.
Corrections chiefs across the country have long argued for the ability to jam the signals, saying the phones -- smuggled into their institutions by the thousands, by visitors, errant employees, and even delivered by drone -- are dangerous because inmates use them to carry out crimes and plot violence both inside and outside prison.
Before cell phones there were letters. Seemed to work fine. Also, there are approved phones available in every prison. I see no need for a prisoner to have a way to bypass prison restrictions on communication. In fact, I see a lot of downsides to it.
But, congratulations if you got your life together.
You have a point, letters do work fine for most things. However, the GP is also correct it might take the perspective of someone who has been an inmate to understand this issue. Let me try to elaborate on the real issues surrounding phones in prison.
The phones inmates have access to aren't very useful, and can actually be dangerous. In a typical situation, there may be 4 phones for 400 inmates. They're first-come, first-serve so there is usually a line or crowd around them. Other inmates can and will use things they overhear against you, so it's not safe to discuss anything you wouldn't feel comfortable having written on your shirt. This also means making a call at any specific time or date isn't practical, and calls are frequently cut short by others.
Like everything else in prison, this creates a black market. Groups will camp the phones and sell time-slots and privacy to other inmates. The amounts they charge can be exorbitant, and are far too expensive for an inmate with a regular prison job to afford. Just for example, I knew a guy who liked to call his wife and kids every day. He worked in the prison kitchen making $18 a month, but the phone crew charged him $1/minute to use the phone. He stole food and condiments from the kitchen and sold them to other inmates to pay for his phone use.
Most people who use a smuggled phone in prison aren't using them to commit or plot crimes. It's more often about having privacy communicating with family, friends, etc. I've known a few people who had legitimate businesses on the outside, and used a smuggled phone to continue running their business.
Rather than blocking phones it might make more sense to issue each inmate a phone the prison can monitor. The whole situation around the payphones they provide drives a lot of violence and crime simply because there aren't enough of the phones.
Yet another incredibly unthinkingly lame idea from those who don't understand technology.
Far better to put a captive cell network in the confines of the prison and capture the cells inside the compound. If it's a friendly cell, and one known to be that of a worker, who can be checked for possession at any time (like send a text that has to be replied to with a specific, changing personal code), let the call go through, maybe. Or it gets routed to the prison IT group. If it's an unknown cell, or otherwise suspicious, let the call go to /dev/null, or maybe even better yet, have it go to a random robocall center!