This article touches on just about all the key issues and challenges facing prisons, detainees and families when talking about the contraband cell phone problem. Key quotes from the article:

And finally and most importantly, a legislative and operational approach limited only to restricting supply instead of also seeking to co-opt legitimate demand for lawful communication with family by supplying a secure cell phone solution such as meshDETECT. If meshDETECT was available, this inmate could have legitimately called his family to notify him of his parole.

Dwayne Kennedy threw a man from a moving car in 1988, but that’s not what’s keeping him in prison today. It’s not the inmate he stabbed 17 years ago either; the state parole board forgave him that.

Instead, California prison officials are keeping Kennedy locked up for an extra five years — costing taxpayers roughly $250,000 — because guards caught him with a contraband cellphone he says he borrowed to tell his family he had just been granted parole and was coming home.

It was “just stupid on my part for even using it,” Kennedy told a pair of parole commissioners convened in June 2010 to decide his punishment for breaking prison rules. But “cellphones are just everywhere in prison nowadays…. It’s easy to borrow one from a guy,” Kennedy said.

Indeed, Kennedy’s access to the phone underscores a rapidly growing problem for California corrections officials. Just five years ago, only 261 of the devices turned up behind state prison walls. This year, guards are on pace to seize about 15,000 phones — nearly one for every 11 inmates. Almost as troubling as prisoners gaining access to cellphones is their frequent source: prison employees.

Last month, a federal grand jury charged Bobby Joe Kirby, a Northern California prison guard, with wire fraud. Inmates paid him for phones via Western Union and other services, according to the indictment. When Kirby showed up to collect the cash at one location, he had to answer a security question he arranged with the inmates. “What’s your favorite color,” the clerk asked. “Green,” Kirby replied.

State investigators found that another guard made $150,000 in a single year delivering cellphones to inmates. He was fired.

Phones are so prevalent in California prisons that even highly scrutinized inmates can get their hands on them. Charles Manson has been caught with two. Inmates have used cellphones to run drug rings, intimidate witnesses and order violent attacks on the outside. Despite state leaders’ rising anxiety over inmates obtaining phones, smuggling them into prisons wasn’t against the law until this month.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill on Oct. 6 making it a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in a county jail. Brown also issued an executive order that requires prison officials to increase the number of random searches of employees and to determine how much it would cost to send them through airport-style screening on their way into work.

Under the new law, most inmates caught with phones face losing 90 days of credit earned for good behavior.

In Kennedy’s case, using the cellphone derailed his parole bid and effectively lengthened his prison stay by at least five years. That’s because a 2008 ballot measure extended the time inmates serving life sentences must wait for a new hearing when they are denied parole or their parole offer is revoked.

When the two parole commissioners met to decide his punishment for violating the cellphone rule, Kennedy said that he had made the calls because he was “overwhelmed and just happy” that he had been granted parole.

“He was so happy…. We were crying and praying,” recalled his sister, Yolanda Kennedy, one of the people he called.

But months later, parole commissioners John Peck and Dennis Smith found that Kennedy’s willingness to violate the prison rule proved he is an “unreasonable risk of danger to society.” They revoked his parole offer and imposed the five-year wait until his next hearing.

The commissioners’ decision seemed a bit severe to Debbie Mukamal, executive director of Stanford University’s Criminal Justice Center, who noted that the state is under a U.S. Supreme Court order to remove tens of thousands of inmates from its overcrowded prisons.

“I wonder if they’re punishing [cellphone use] more severely because it’s something they feel like they can’t control,” Mukamal said.

Heidi Rummel, a former federal prosecutor who now advocates for inmates’ rights as co-director of USC Law School’s Post-Conviction Justice Project, said there should be some evidence of harm before imposing such a harsh penalty.

“It would seem that why he had the cellphone would be a critical factor in deciding whether it made him a danger to society,” Rummel said.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court and the 2nd District Court of Appeal have rebuffed Kennedy’s efforts to get the decision overturned. His attorney, Keith Wattley, has filed a petition with the state Supreme Court. “There’s never been any allegation he’s done anything illegal with this phone,” Wattley said.

Kennedy, 44, has been in prison since 1990, serving 15 years to life for kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. He’s now at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blyth. He became eligible for parole in 1999 but a decade passed before parole commissioners found he was no longer a threat to society and recommended his release. They noted that Kennedy had stayed out of trouble for seven years and had a stable home and good job waiting for him on the outside.

The cellphone bust changed everything.

“Frankly, this panel didn’t buy that you were going to call your supporters to thank them,” said Peck, a parole board commissioner and recently retired prison guard who presided over the June 2010 hearing. “There is no way you would put your parole date at risk to make a thank-you call.”

Source

The post Borrowed Cellphone Slams Prison Cell Shut appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This article shows what a business operation the smuggling of cell phones into prison has become. Contraband cell phones have become as desired as drugs in prisons and jails. The contraband value of these smuggled cell phones can be reduced by providing an alternative, prison sanctioned, secure cell phone service.

Luis S. Roman, 48, of Avenel, was sentenced to five years in state prison without possibility of parole by Superior Court Judge Bradley J. Ferencz in Middlesex County. He pleaded guilty to official misconduct, admitting that he smuggled cell phones and drugs into the prison for a network of inmates who solicited customers and distributed the contraband. He smuggled contraband into the prison several times a week, including pre-paid cell phones, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, hiding the items in his protective vest and boots.

Quadir Barnes, an inmate at Northern State Prison in Newark, pleaded guilty Monday to being a member of a network that smuggled pre-paid cell phones and drugs into the prison.

His sister and two inmates who were customers also pleaded guilty Monday.

Barnes, 32, pleaded guilty to a second-degree charge of racketeering before state Superior Court Judge Mathias E. Rodriguez in New Brunswick, state Criminal Justice Director Stephen J. Taylor said.

Under a plea agreement, the state will recommend that he be sentenced to six years in state prison, with the sentence to run consecutive to his current sentence.

In pleading guilty, Barnes admitted that he was part of a network of inmates who solicited customers and distributed cell phones and narcotics that were smuggled into the prison by a former corrections officer, Luis S. Roman, 47, of Woodbridge. Roman pleaded guilty on April 18 to charges of racketeering and official misconduct. The state will recommend he be sentenced to 14 years in state prison, including five years of parole ineligibility.

Barnes, Roman and 17 other people who allegedly distributed contraband in the prison or acted as accomplices outside the prison were charged with racketeering and conspiracy in a state grand jury indictment obtained by the Division of Criminal Justice on Sept. 15. Separate indictments obtained that month charged 16 inmates who bought contraband.

The investigation revealed that Roman smuggled contraband into the prison several times a week, including pre-paid cell phones, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, hiding the items in his protective vest and boots. The inmates who acted as distributors had family members or friends outside the prison who allegedly acted as accomplices by buying phones and drugs and packaging them for delivery to Roman. The investigation revealed that inmates paid for the items by having money wired to Roman’s wife or another accomplice on the outside.

The state Department of Corrections Special Investigations Division began looking into the possibility of a correction officer or other prison worker smuggling contraband into Northern State after numerous wireless phones of the same makes and models were confiscated from inmates.

A joint investigation by the State Police and the Corrections Department began in July 2009. Roman’s smuggling continued from at least August 2007 to Nov. 14, 2009, when he was arrested with his wife. Ann Marie Roman, 36, of Woodbridge, who now is divorced from Luis Roman, pleaded guilty on Sept. 14 to second-degree conspiracy to commit bribery. She admitted that, at her husband’s direction, she received thousands of dollars through Western Union and Money Gram as payment for smuggled items.

Roman allegedly used two trusted inmates at Northern State as his organizers or middle men. The inmates, Angel Vasquez, 53, and Willie Wade, 46, in turn allegedly employed numerous other inmates, including Barnes, as distributors to canvass the prison for customers. The customers agreed to pay a fee for the contraband. For example, if an inmate wanted a pre-paid cell phone, he would have to pay up to $400, plus an additional $200 as a “shipment fee.”

At each level of the organization, middle-men and distributors received a certain amount of money. Once the contraband was smuggled in, Roman allegedly would pass it along to his middle men, who would give it to the distributor inmates, frequently kitchen and laundry workers, who would distribute the contraband throughout the prison. The indictments are merely accusations and the remaining defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Source

The post Inmate Pleads Guilty to Smuggling Cell Phones appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This editorial makes the case that smuggling contraband prison cell phones should be illegal in California. And of course, that is correct. But laws making cell phone smuggling illegal don’t address the demand factors that cause contraband prison cell phones to be so valuable. Providing a controlled and secure prison cell phone service for legitimate prisoner use, much like current prison payphone service works, will go along way to reducing the contraband value of smuggled wireless cell phones in jails.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in criminal justice to understand that prison inmates never should have access to cell phones. They use them to plot violent crimes inside and outside the prison, plot escapes and conduct drug deals with other inmates or contacts on the outside.

Matthew Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, agrees. He said, “Cell phone smuggling into California’s prisons is a very serious and growing problem. Public safety officials in prisons and prosecutors on the outside need additional tools to combat cell phone smuggling to inmates.”

One such tool should be stiff felony penalties for anyone smuggling cell phones into prisons or accepting bribes for phones. Those penalties should be even tougher for prison guards.

Unfortunately, it is the guards who are suspected of providing most of the cell phones to inmates, often taking bribes. Yet California continues to be lax in passing laws to crack down on the problem.

Possessing a cell phone behind bars violates prison rules, but still is not illegal. Inmates can lose early release credits, and employees caught smuggling phones can lose their jobs.

Even when someone is caught, the penalty is extraordinarily light. Last month, Terry Lane, a former California correctional officer from San Jose, was sentenced to just 45 days in jail for smuggling several cell phones to state prison inmates.

Lane also was fined $5,700, which the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office said was the amount of bribes Lane took from inmates for delivering the phones. The bribery charge was dropped in a plea bargain.

A more appropriate sentence for Lane would have been something closer to 10 years in state prison and a fine many times higher.

The best way to discourage prison guards from taking bribes for delivering cell phones is the use of tough penalties that include long prison terms, firing and permanent disqualification for ever working in a prison.

There are a few bills floating around in the Legislature to stiffen penalties for those who bring phones to inmates and or accept bribes for doing so.

State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, has introduced two bills this year that add penalties for inmates, employees or visitors smuggling cell phones.

Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Santa Clara, is carrying another bill that would require random searches of employees and contractors.

Action is long overdue. Prison officials say that the number of cell phones confiscated in California prisons has been growing rapidly over the past few years and has become a major problem that needs to be remedied.

If prison employees or visitors faced years behind bars for cell phone smuggling, we believe the practice would decline sharply. There is no good reason to delay legislation, even if there are added costs.

Source

The post Get The Cell Phones Out of Cells appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.