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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.
This is actually a terrible idea, but it takes the perspective of having been a felony inmate for a multiple-year bid.
What really happens with prisons is that there's a financial incentive to encourage recidivism. This means providing only enough services to receive state and federal money, but not enough to actually lower the recidivism far enough to put the prisons out of business.
If it weren't for an illegal cell phone, I would have been unable to keep my finances squared away and get out with a solid base of support, ready to work and meet my obligations--because I'd been meeting them all along. I experienced first-hand the difference that effective communication makes to staying out of the system: it's of paramount importance.
Says the guy whose never interacted with the system. Lawyers will advise you to take care of your finances before incarceration because you generally can't do it while incarcerated. The explicitly prevent you from doing so. For those who might have child support or other legal obligations they don't disapear just because you have been incarcerated. When you don't pay that child support they will take away your passport and your drivers license which then makes it even more difficult to get a job. Not to mention most employers won't hire an ex-con to begin with. No. The system is designed to ensure the existence of an underclass for the benefit of a few. It's called the prison industrial complex. Slavery was not entirely abolished. There is an exception for prisoners and some states even rent out there prison labor. Until fairly recently that was the solution to the problem created by abolishing general slavery and unlike the prior system the new system didn't protect the prisoners. Those who worked the prisoners didn't care if they died so they'd overwork the prisoners. Unlike in the old system where a slave owner had an interest in that slave continuing to produce the rental of the prison population had no incentive to treat the prisoners adequately.
Why? A prison should serve several functions, only one of them being punishment. How about rehabilitation? Very few prisoners deserve life imprisonment, and it is in everyone's best interest to do what we can to have prisoners re-enter society as best they can when their time is up. You will not accomplish that by treating them like animals.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
A prison unit with 75 to 150 inmates will have maybe 5 phones available. Usually at any given time 1 to 3 of those phones will be damaged and repairs might take a month or two to get authorization because it's not a priority. Then you have the fact that inmates can't just use those phones whenever they want, they are given blocks of time during the day/evening that the phones are turned on. You might have phones available from 1pm until 8pm and everyone has to use the very few phones available during that time. Prisons have an internal inmate hierarchy and if you are way down the list the prisoners running the show may or may not let you use the phone.
When or if you do get to use the phone you better hope the person you are trying to call will be in their office and available to talk to you. If not there is no system for them to call you back on, those phones are outgoing calls only. You can't do many of those things through the mail because it would take a week to ask a question and get an answer, then your follow up question based on the first reply will take another week and cost money for postage. Friends can't handle your private business for you even if they wanted to. Most of the time family can't unless it's your spouse or you have given permission legally for another person to take care of things for you. That is pretty complicated and not free in any way.
Being in prison is the punishment. You are locked up for X months or years and can't leave. You are told when to go to bed and get up. You don't get to decide what you eat for your meals. You don't get to make any real decisions about your day to day life during the time you are imprisoned. That is the punishment handed down by the courts.
Prisoners should have access to prison installed land line phones when they need them to handle personal business. It should be monitored and recorded just like all communications in and out of the prison unless it's with a lawyer. But they should be able to handle their financial obligations and take care of the things they need to keep up on in order to have a chance at springing back to a normal crime free life after they are released. Anything else should qualify as cruel and unusual punishment. It's setting them up for failure and that is the opposite of what temporary incarceration is for. Also once a person serves their time, including parole, they should not have to tell potential employees or anyone else they were convicted of a crime. If they have paid their debt to society for their past criminal activity it shouldn't follow them around.
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!