FCC Takes Up Technology Solutions To Contraband Cell Phones

FCC-contraband-cell-phonesThe FCC today issued FCC 13-58, Contraband Wireless Device Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), to “remove barriers to the deployment and viability of existing and future technologies used to combat contraband wireless devices.” The NPRM discusses current technologies such as managed access, detection, jamming and wireless carrier service termination of identified contraband cell phones.

Below are excerpts from the rulemaking document:

Inmate use of contraband wireless devices has grown within the federal and state prison systems parallel to the growth of wireless device use by the general public. In federal institutions and prison camps, GAO reports that the number of cell phones confiscated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) grew from 1,774 in 2008 to 3,684 in 2010. While not all states track or report data on the use of contraband wireless devices, the data that has been reported demonstrates significant growth. For example, California correctional officers seized approximately 261 cell phones in 2006; by 2011, correctional officers discovered more than 15,000 contraband wireless devices. Further, a test of an interdiction technology in two California State prisons detected more than 25,000 unauthorized communication attempts over an 11 day period in 2011. A similar interdiction system permanently installed in a Mississippi correctional facility reportedly blocked 325,000 communications attempts in the first month of operation, and as of February 2012, had blocked more than 2 million communications attempts.

In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Notice), we take steps to facilitate the development of

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Economics Of The Prison Payphone Call

Prisoners-Phone-CallsThe first round of comments are in for the FCC Proposed Rule Making 12-375 (The Wright Petition), and advocates from both sides of the issue have submitted letters and comments on the price of interstate calls from prison.

Some cash-strapped states and facilities collect commissions from prison phone contracts. Texas, for instance, uses some of the money collected for a crime victims’ fund.

Nationwide, states collect more than $150 million a year from prison phone commissions, according to a Prison Legal News survey. These commissions effectively raise call rates, but they also provide funding that states or prisons crave.

“Correctional agencies need those revenues either to lessen the financial burden that prison operations put on state and county budgets, or to implement programs that benefit inmates,” Stephanie A. Joyce, an attorney representing Dallas-based Securus Technologies, advised the FCC in October.

Of particular interest amongst the many briefs, letters and comments was a study of Securus Technologies’ prison payphone costs, commissions and prices across small, medium and large jails as well as state department of corrections (DOC) facilities. The following are some of the highlights from that report:

The costs incurred

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meshDETECT® Awarded Notice Of Allowance From The United States Patent And Trademark Office

meshDETECT registered logo jpgmeshDETECT® is pleased to announce that it has recently received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a patent application entitled, “System and method for controlling, monitoring and recording of wireless telecommunications services in penal institutions” covering its Secure Prison Cell Phone Solutions™. A notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and is pending issuance.

The application broadly covers systems and methods of providing incoming and outgoing telecommunications services to persons incarcerated in penal facilities. A plurality of controls is provided that may reduce contraband devices and encourage good behavior by detainees, penal employees, and others. Portable electronic devices, primarily mobile telephones, are provided to detainees that have exhibited acceptable behavior and are not determined to be security risks.

Contraband mobile telephones have become an increasing problem in prison facilities, further reducing prison facility inmate communications services earnings, compromising safety and presenting opportunities for prison employee corruption. While prison officials have taken steps to reduce contraband cell phones, the expanded capabilities of small portable devices have made such devices more valuable to detainees. This has increased economic incentives for penal employees to facilitate the smuggling and trafficking of these devices in prisons. With a contraband mobile device that has Internet access, a detainee may view telephone directories, maps and photographs for criminal purposes. Gang violence and

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Securus Technologies Sold To Abry Partners?

Update (4/30/13): The FCC has given its approval for the ABRY purchase of Securus Technologies from Castle Harlan. From the Public Notice:

“Upon review of the record, we find that the transaction is likely to result in certain public interest benefits, including increased capital resources available to Applicants to make service improvements.

In addition, Applicants affirm that they will continue to be bound by existing contract rates for service to customers and that there will be no changes in rates, terms, or conditions of service as a result of the transaction.

Nonetheless, this grant does not approve the current rates, terms, or conditions, and as noted above, the Commission is reviewing those issues in the Inmate Calling NPRM
proceeding.

Accordingly, and subject to the condition stated above, we find that grant of the Applications will serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity.

Pursuant to sections 4(i) and 214 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended,and sections 0.291 and 0.261 of the Commission’s rules,WCB and IB, under delegated authority, approve the Applications listed herein subject to the condition stated above.”

Update (4/21/13): Some additional deal details  – Abry Partners is acquiring a 66.9% stake in prison phone operator Securus Holdings Inc. from Castle Harlan in a transaction not officially announced by the buyer, but revealed in regulatory filings. The deal could value the target at more than $700 million.

Also taking additional minority stakes in Securus are HarbourVest Partners, Redoak Investments LLC and Mesirow Financial Capital Partners, according to a document from the Arizona

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Chief Inspector of Prisons Says Prisoners Should Be Given In-Cell Phones

prison-phone-in-cellAdd yet another voice to the growing chorus of high level prison administrators who advocate for increased prisoner access to telecommunications to address a host of problems in prison. Among the reasons Nick Hardwick, Chief Inspector of Prisons in the UK, who heads up the prison system there, gave for this recommendation:

  • The illegal use of mobile phones was widespread in most prisons and installing phones in cells would enable more calls to be monitored.
  • Making inmates wait to use a phone on the landing and then asking prison officers to control the scrum as prisoners battled for five minutes to talk was a waste of scarce resources.
  • In-cell phones would be monitored, with the calls paid for by prisoners and inmates restricted to calling certain pre-approved numbers only.
  • I think there are some prisoners where, provided it was properly managed and supervised, it would be efficient and help people to sort themselves out.
  • Our experience is that in-cell phones can have a positive impact on prisoners’ rehabilitation, not only encouraging the maintenance of family ties, but reducing the prevalence of illegal mobile phones.

We only have two questions. Where are the American prison leadership thought leaders on this approach? And why install wall phones, when you can deploy wireless prison payphones™ such as the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solutions™ immediately and with no capital cost?

Source
 

 

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Phones In Cells For Inmates Recommended By Prison Chief

phones-in-prison-cellsHere is an interesting article endorsing the deployment and use of phones in prison cells to increase prisoner family contact and reduce recidivism. The issue of public perception of such a strategy is acknowledged, but enhancing access to telecommunication services will reduce the value of contraband cell phones and improve officer safety in prisons and jails. The strategy can easily be accomplished with no upfront cost through the deployment of the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution.

Telephones and not just televisions should be allowed in prisoners’ cells, the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service has suggested.

Colin McConnell said helping people keep in touch with their families could help prevent reoffending.

He raised the idea with MSPs on Holyrood’s Justice Committee.

“I know that might stick in the craw of certain members of the public and maybe some members sitting round the table here,” Mr McConnell admitted.

“It seems to me you get people to behave normally if you treat them normally; you try and recreate normality.

“One of the things that’s generally accepted helps towards reducing reoffending is relationships and family contact.

Television curfew

“Anything reasonably and safely we can do to help sustain and develop family contact, we should give it a go.”

Mr McConnell admitted, in mentioning phones in cells, he was being “a wee bit reformist”.

The SPS chief executive said he is a “fan of TVs in cells” for prisoners, with “loads of positives that come from that”.

Labour MSP Graeme Pearson,

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Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs

wireless-prison-payphoneHere is the latest summary of recent news articles regarding contraband cell phones in prisons around the world. I am calling this round up of articles, “Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs” because this is essentially what smuggled mobile phones in jails have become – a substitute for the current wall mounted prison payphones.

Alabama Inmates With Illegal Cell Phone Active On Facebook: “Cell phones are against the law, that’s a new bill that just passed last year, making the possession, or the introduction of a cell phone into a prison setting a class C felony,” Corbett explains, though he still is not surprised by the discovery.

“Last year we confiscated more than 5,000 cell phones statewide.” The Department also has a policy against inmates using social networks. It’s clearly posted on the DOC’s website that such sites “are a security violation and will be shut down.” (Source)

Cat Caught Smuggling Saw, Cell Phone, Into Prison: The cat’s out of the bag, and that means prisoners at a prison in northeast Brazil will no longer have easy access to cell phones and saws.

Upon inspection, officials noticed that the feline was wrapped with tape. Underneath that tape was a battery of items including a saw, cell phone, drills, an earphone, memory card, batteries, and a phone charger. (Source)

Fourth Circuit to Hear Dispute Over Cell Phone Contraband Conviction: Here’s the issue: Did Beason have “fair and sufficient notice” that

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Prison Managed Access System Jammer Deployments

managed-access-jammer-trialsSince the first high profile prison managed access system (MAS) jammer deployment to thwart contraband cell phones at the MDOC facility in Parchman, MS., state departments of correction around the country have been evaluating the technology for potential deployment.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) announced a statewide deployment of cell phone jammers, despite high profile concerns about their effectiveness. And recently, Texas and Maryland moved to test the technology in their prison facilities.

Given these high profile initiatives and the high cost of the systems, it is not surprising that new MAS providers have moved into the market to challenge the incumbent, Tecore. A review of recent FCC Experimental Licensing System applications show the following firms deploying and testing managed access jamming systems in state prisons around the country:

Update (3/28/13): Screened Images has applied for FCC Experimental Licensing at:

  • Avenal (KINGS), CA (0276-EX-ST-2013)
  • Avenal (KINGS), CA (0178-EX-PL-2013)
  • Leakesville, MS (0220-EX-ST-2013)

Update (2/9/13): Screened Images has applied for FCC Experimental Licensing at:

  • California Corrections Center (0107-EX-ST-2013)
  • High Desert State Prison (0108-EX-ST-2013)
  • Pelican Bay State Prison (0109-EX-ST-2013)
  • California Health Care Facility (0112-EX-ST-2013)

Update (2/4/13): Screened Images has applied for FCC Experimental Licensing at:

  • Sierra Conservation Center (SCC) located at 5100 OByrnes Ferry Rd, Jamestown, CA 95327 (0105-EX-ST-2013)
  • Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) located at 4001 Highway 104 Ione, CA 95640 (0041-EX-ST-2013)

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FCC Proposes Cuts In Prisoners’ LD Phone Call Rates

FCC-rule-makingThe Federal Communications Commission today said it will propose rules to lower rates charged to prison inmates for long distance telephone calls by considering changes to its regulations governing rates for interstate interexchange inmate calling services (ICS), after studying the issue for nine years. We have printed the key portions of the Proposed Rule Making below.

Given the scope of the request, the high profile parties on both sides of the issue, and the potential negative impact on the revenue of the prison payphone providers and the budgets of state departments of correction; this will be a highly contested rule making. It seems inevitable however that public pressure will force some sort of compromise on the prisons and their inmate communications service providers.

The question then becomes how do the prisons make up the revenue lost through the inevitable reduction in prison phone call commissions? We suggest that they consider deploying the meshDETECT Secure Prison Cell Phone Solutions™ to offset the lost revenue and reduce contraband cell phone smuggling.

There are multiple proposals to address ICS rates in the record. We seek to balance the goal of ensuring reasonable ICS rates for end users with the security concerns and expense inherent to ICS within the statutory guidelines of sections 201(b) and 276 of the Act. Ensuring just and reasonable ICS rates may be accomplished through incentives or regulations, or a combination of both; we seek comment

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Contraband Cell Phone Supply & Demand

The American Correction Association has an article on its website summarizing the recent meeting of the newly-formed No Cells in Cells Coalition on Oct. 23, 2012, at the ACA headquarters to discuss the problem of contraband cell phones smuggled into prisons. Attendees included representatives from the Delaware Department of Corrections, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, the Virginia Department of Corrections, the American Jail Association, the National Organization for Victim Assistance, the National Sheriff’s Association, cell phone companies Sprint and ATT, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and others.

According to the article, the attendees discussed the types of offenders most likely to attempt to smuggle phones. “Members concluded that while phones are more likely to be smuggled by long-term offenders looking to continue their drug or crime operations, witness intimidation within pretrial facilities is common as well. Kristy Dyroff, director of communications for the National Organization for Victim Assistance, commented that witness intimidation through use of cell phones in pretrial facilities is most common in domestic violence cases.

Several methods currently used to combat the issue of contraband cell phones were discussed throughout the meeting, including:

• Dogs trained to sniff out cell phone parts;
• Technologies such as managed access;
• Thorough searches and seizures by correctional staff;
• Metal detectors; and
• Observation and profiling to determine which offenders are most likely to

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Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs – Wright Petition Edition

This edition of “Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs” focuses on the recent decision by the FCC to take up the ten year old Wright petition addressing the high cost of interstate prison payphone calls. The articles excerpted below provide an in depth look at the issue.

The First Call Is Free; the Rest Are a Fortune: Paying a $4.25 connection fee and then 75 cents per minute thereafter seems costly, unless, perhaps, we’re talking about a phone call from our future Mars colony back to Earth. It is, though, what an operator at the phone company Global Tel*Link says it costs for a call from Pennsylvania’s Carbon County Correctional Facility to anywhere beyond the local calling area. That’s in line with the rates other companies charge for prisoners around the country to make simple long-distance phone calls. To compare, prepaid cell phones on the outside top out at about 20 cents a minute, and a standard residential landline plan at just half that.

If you find it difficult to rally sympathy for prisoners’ hefty monthly phone bills, consider two things. First, we know that contact with the outside world while in prison is tied to better outcomes after prison. Second, those costs are generally borne by families and friends, either through collect charges or the refilling of debit accounts, what the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Annette Dickerson calls “a transfer of punishment.” Source

The price to

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Recorded Jail Phone Calls Provide Valuable Evidence

A major concern in the use of contraband cell phones in prison is the fact that the call content, and associated call data, is not being captured. Now this data can be captured by replacing smuggled cell phones with a secure prison cell phone solution such as meshDETECT that records and stores this critical information for use by law enforcement. This article discusses the importance of these prison phone call recordings to prosecutors and law enforcement.

When Kiheem Taylor was charged with kidnapping two teenagers at a Timonium light-rail station and raping one of them, prosecutors struggled with an all-too common problem — they didn’t have enough solid evidence.

But Taylor gave prosecutors a break when he made phone calls from the Baltimore County Detention Center. Just months earlier, authorities had begun recording inmates’ phone calls, and Taylor implicated himself while talking to an ex-girlfriend. Judge Robert N. Dugan said at the time that the call was “overwhelming, damning evidence of [Taylor's] guilt.”

The 2008 case was the first time that Baltimore County prosecutors used a taped phone call from the detention center in a case, but the practice has been increasingly used across Maryland and the nation — including in the high-profile Trayvon Martin case. Though prosecutors say the evidence is crucial in otherwise difficult cases, defense attorneys complain that such monitoring is unfair to their clients.

William B. Buie III, who represented a teen in a recent murder case that

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Telephones Installed Inside Prison Cells

In May of 2011 we wrote about a British prison that solved the problem of contraband cell phones by installing landline telephones in each of the cells of a jail. The results were fewer smuggled phones, less violence, and even fewer failed drug tests! Now another prison in the U.K is taking the same approach.

As the authorities responsible for the prison state, the installation of a phone in each prison cell “may reduce the number of mobile phones being smuggled into prisons.” Additionally, the greater use of IT could transform prison education, resettlement and family contact.

For existing jails and prisons where the installation of a hard wired wall phone is impractical due to cost and infrastructure limitations, a secure prison cell phone solution such as meshDETECT will achieve the same results with no capital outlays.

Prisoners have been given telephones inside their cells despite ministers promising to crack down on perks behind bars.

Convicts at a young offender institution in Kent in the United Kingdom have become the first in state-run jails to be given personal landlines that they buy credit to use at any time of day or night.

They can only ring numbers approved by the authorities and cannot receive calls on the handsets, while the cost of installing them is being covered by BT.

If the pilot scheme is deemed a success it could be copied in public sector prisons across England and Wales, having been

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Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs

Here is a summary of recent news articles regarding contraband cell phones in prisons around the world. I am calling this round up of articles, “Wireless Prison Payphone™ Briefs” because this is essentially what smuggled mobile phones in jails have become – a substitute for the current wall mounted prison payphones.

Mobile phone jamming technology set for Scotland’s prisons: Mobile phone blockers, costing up to £1 million per prison, are being planned to stop inmates continuing to run criminal operations from behind bars.

Detective Chief Superintendent Stephen Whitelock, head of intelligence group at Scottish Crime and Drugs Enforcement, said: “We have established a national prison intelligence unit which involves close collaboration with the SPS and the eight police forces, and one of the key strands of work is to tackle the use of mobile phones in prison.”

However, the Mobile Broadband Group, which represents providers, has raised concerns. “The interference equipment that will be allowed within prisons as a result of this legislation has the potential to cause harmful interference to the customers of the mobile operators legitimately using their mobile devices in the vicinity,” it said.

Scottish Conservative chief whip John Lamont added: “Everyone agrees that prisoners should not be able to access mobile phones or the internet outwith times monitored and agreed by the Scottish Prison Service. But the way to do this is to clamp down on smuggling. (Source)

Low-tech vs. high tech to stop

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BOP Inmate Crowding Study Shines Light On Need For New Approach To Telephone Access

The U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) released a report last month on the Federal Bureau Of Prisons mounting overcrowding issues entitled, “Growing Inmate Crowding Negatively Affects Inmates, Staff, and Infrastructure.”

In this report, the GAO analyzed BOP’s inmate population data from fiscal years 2006 through 2011, BOP’s 2020 long-range capacity plan, and BOP policies and statutory authority. GAO visited five federal prisons chosen on the basis of geographic dispersion and varying security levels. The results are not generalizable, but provide information on the effects of a growing prison population.

While it is clear from the report that much needs to be done to address the root causes of the overcrowding, we believe that some of the current dangers and restrictions imposed by this situation can be mitigated through the deployment of the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution.

The GAO report excerpts below demonstrate how the introduction of our solution can increase telephone access, reduce prisoner movement while improving morale, and offset the loss or reduction of family visits:

Telephone Access

“The larger number of inmates also limits inmate access to the telephone to call home and computer to e-mail family members and other contacts. For example, at one facility we visited, each housing unit had three telephones for about 156 inmates.”

Clearly the deployment of secure prison cell phones would significantly improve the 1.2% telephone-to-prisoner ratio at this housing unit as well increase call access throughout the overcrowded BOP system.

Prisoner

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