As this article demonstrates, the use of current prison telephone systems requires prisoner movement. And prisoner movement always entails the potential risk of violence, both to guards and other prisoners.

The meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution eliminates this problem and increases correctional officer safety by allowing prisoners to make calls from their cells. Prisoner movement is eliminated, more calls can be made, thereby raising revenue, and conversations can be conducted safely and privately.

Officials say an inmate at the Union County Jail angry about the use of the telephone system assaulted a jail officer last week.

Jimmy Decarlos Henderson, 31, of Union has been charged by the Union County Sheriff’s Office with aggravated assault and battery, according to an incident report.

The report states that on Feb. 13, guards went to check on Henderson, who was upset that the facility’s phone system had not been turned on. The guards instructed Henderson twice to go back into his cell area and wait until the system was turned on, but Henderson refused, the report states.

Henderson positioned himself in a corner and “took a fighting stance,” the report states. A guard stepped toward Henderson, and Henderson swung and hit him in the body, head and face area several times as the guard tried to subdue him, according to the report.

The guard got Henderson on the floor and put his elbow on Henderson’s throat to get him to stop fighting, the report states. Henderson then went to his cell.

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An article on the corrupting influence of prisoner demand for contraband items, and the willingness to pay for those items, has on correctional officers.

Contraband smuggling in prisons is a problem of supply and demand. Prison initiatives to reduce contraband, such as smuggled cellphones, should include strategies to reduce demand as well as prevent supply. The meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution co-opts the demand for smuggled cell phones, and therefore the contraband value of those phones.

Matthew Amos has wide, boxcar shoulders and steam-engine arms. On Friday he stood before a federal judge in Denver pleading for his life.

If he went to prison, Amos told the judge, he would have to pay fellow inmates for protection. Or he would be “whored out.” Or worse.

It’s what happens to former prison guards who end up behind bars.

“There’s no way I would be able to stay out on that yard without providing some kind of service,” Amos said, voice unsteady. “To be asked to go into that system will be asking me to be something I don’t want to be.”

This is where $17,200 in easy money landed him.

Amos’ conviction for smuggling tobacco into a federal prison in Florence provides a revealing glimpse into the jailhouse black market — where a single bag of tobacco can go for $1,000 and the key players in funneling contraband to inmates are often the very people hired to watch over them.

Between 2001 and 2010, the annual number of federal correctional officers arrested nearly doubled, according to a Justice Department report released in September. During that period, 272 officers were arrested, with many of those cases involving contraband-smuggling.

Tobacco, which was banned in nearly all federal prisons in 2004, has fueled a lucrative, illicit prison economy that proves irresistible to some prison workers. But employees have also been involved in smuggling cellphones, drugs and other items into inmates.

“Some officers can make more than they’re making from their actual paycheck just by smuggling in tobacco,” said Robert Worley, a professor of criminal justice at Texas A&M University — Central Texas, who has studied inappropriate guard-inmate relationships.

Bureau of Prisons? spokesman Chris Burke said prospective employees undergo background checks and have regular training in an effort to snuff out smuggling.

“We try to educate them on some of the traps that staff can fall into and on how inmates can manipulate staff,” Burke said, adding that most prison employees keep their noses clean.

At Amos’ sentencing hearing Friday, Florence associate warden Louis Milusnic said smuggling by employees has devastating impacts throughout a prison.

“When a staff member crossed over the line and becomes compromised . . . it erodes the authority the staff members have to have to keep control of the inmate population,” he said.

In many ways, Amos’ case is typical of the slow recruitment of prison workers into the black market. He worked as a recreation specialist at the prison, where he had regular contact with inmates, including one with whom he became friendly. After slipping the inmate some extra leatherworking supplies from time to time, Amos and the inmate began talking about a tobacco-smuggling scheme.

Amos would sneak in bags of tobacco to give to the inmate, who would handle distribution to customers around the prison, according to a recounting of the case in Amos’ plea agreement. The inmate’s girlfriend would collect money from the customers’ families and then put a chunk of it into a bank account for Amos. Amos was sent a debit card tied to that account, according to the plea agreement. His take was $400 per bag.

Between May and November 2007, Amos withdrew $17,200 from the bank account, according to the court document. A January 2008 tip from Amos’ inmate accomplice proved his undoing.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge John Kane took sympathy on Amos, saying he wanted Amos — a military veteran who served in Bosnia — to receive treatment and education instead of prison. He gave Amos five years of probation.

And Amos said he was sorry.

“I fully take responsibility for everything I’ve done,” he said. “I’m ashamed of not only what I’ve done but the image I’ve cast on everyone else.”

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This article is about the challenges and indignities of visiting a loved one in jail. The sheriff in charge of the jail discusses the environment in the visiting room, “There are loads of kids there. And a strong part of me says that’s not a good environment for any child. I don’t want kids seeing this stuff. The other side is, if they’re connecting with their father, that’s a good thing, too. We can’t do it any other way because we have so many visitors, so many prisoners. You want to make it better. I’m struggling how to pull that off.”

Certainly families want and deserve to see their incarcerated love ones. In addition to visitation however, enhanced and more frequent telephone conversations would assist in allowing children of prisoners to connect with their incarcerated parent. Part of the challenge for prisons in allowing access to prison payphones is the safety risk of prisoner movement required to get prisoners to the phones. By deploying the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution, prisons can minimize the need for prisoner movement which enhances the safety of both detainees and guards while offering families more frequent and higher quality contact with their incarcerated loved ones.

Every Thursday since the arrest of his son July 30, Neal Tarshis rolls his wheelchair to a bus stop to begin a trek to Cook County Jail.

“I see him as much as they let me,” says Tarshis, over the rumble of the #93 bus. “I want him to know someone cares.”

Tarshis, 63, in a wheelchair because of severe arthritis, lives in Astoria Place, a nursing home at 6300 N. California. It is a two-hour, four-bus commute — the #93 to the #82 to the #126 to the #94 — to get to the jail at 3000 S. California. Once, he says, he made the trip only to find he couldn’t get in to see his son.

“I went with Neal,” said a friend. “They changed visiting hours without notice. They didn’t treat him nice. It was a nightmare.”

Tarshis wrote to me to complain, and since I couldn’t go back in time and observe how he was handled or mishandled at the jail, the thing to do was to go with him and watch.

Some 11,000 prisoners live at the jail, giving it the population of Edison Park. The mayor of the jail, so to speak, is Sheriff Tom Dart, and if you expect him to be defensive about mistreated visitors, you’d be wrong.

“I detest apologists rationalizing bad behavior,” Dart said. “Sometimes there’s elements of truth in both sides. There are times when I scratch my head why we’re not treating someone with more respect who comes to visit.” Dart sympathizes with the 1,000 or so daily visitors, who must pass through tight security for their 15-minute visit.

“These are decent people and we’re not treating them with a red carpet,” the sheriff said. “They’ve gone through hell enough as it is, lives turned upside down by a grandson or a nephew. These are grandparents coming in, aunts and uncles. They’ve done nothing wrong. How does it work for our office to treat people like trash?”

But he also sympathizes with his officers.

“Objectively, I challenge someone to find a more difficult job than being a correctional officer,” he said. “It’s a very, very difficult job. Can the public be unreasonable? Yes. Can the correctional officer? Yes. But we’ve tried to be much more customer-friendly.”

Two hours is a long time on buses, and Tarshis reminisces about his son, a Navy vet.

“I have so many memories of when he was little,” said Tarshis. “He was very intelligent, very responsible. He got A’s in all his subjects. He’s not a bad child, he’s sweet.”

His son, 36, has too many problems to summarize here. Suffice it to say this is his third time in jail, not for a grave crime — he didn’t kill anybody — and I’m not using his name to make it easier if he pulls himself together.

Tarshis and I join a long line outside the tall concertina wire-topped fence around the jail. The guards take us five at a time, ordering us to have our IDs ready, reminding us that we cannot bring in cell phones or pens.

Once, visitors were told to bury their contraband in the bushes outside. Now Dart has been installing vending machine lockers.

We go through metal detectors and are frisked by guards; their manner is severe but not rude and I get the impression that so long as you immediately do exactly what they say it goes smoothly, but that any hesitation or resistance might invite rougher treatment.

We give our names, wait more, then are ushered into a long room, 15 at a time, with stools bolted to the floor. Fifteen prisoners in sand-colored jail garb emerge on the other side of the Plexiglas. It’s loud and hard to hear. The jail used to use phones, but those were destroyed by angry inmates and visitors. Now there is a round red metal plate, the holes staggered to keep drinking straws filled with cocaine from being pushed through.

His son, gaunt, his head closely sheared, is all jangly intensity — I expected to watch him and his dad talk, but he wants to talk to me, a compressed stream of complaint and indignation about the jail. Next to us, a mother puts a toddler on the counter and the girl presses her hands flat against the glass.

That’s another issue Dart grapples with — there can be a child at one spot, a profanity-laced tirade at the next, and a woman holding up her shirt to flash her breasts at a third.

“There are loads of kids there,” said Dart, proud father of five kids. “And a strong part of me says that’s not a good environment for any child. I don’t want kids seeing this stuff. The other side is, if they’re connecting with their father, that’s a good thing, too. We can’t do it any other way because we have so many visitors, so many prisoners. You want to make it better. I’m struggling how to pull that off.”

Dart would like remote video visits, to save families the trip, but “there’s no money.”

The next court date for Neal Tarshis’s son is Nov. 2, which means one thing. “I get to make four more visits,” he said.

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Another prison, another guard, another contraband cell phone…

A Corrections Officer has been arrested and charged for his alleged participation in delivering contraband to an inmate.

The Western Correctional Institution (WCI) Officer is facing termination after prison intelligence officers suspected he was attempting to bring contraband to an inmate and notified local and federal law enforcement authorities.

Officer Brian Hawk, 33, a 9 year veteran of the Division of Corrections is now faces charges of attempting to deliver cell phones and tobacco to an inmate.

The Division of Correction has already begun the process of placing the officer on leave with the intent to terminate his employment. The case began as alert investigative officers at WCI noticed irregularities surrounding the activities of a particular inmate.

The subsequent investigation revealed an alleged scheme involving the inmate, a correctional officer and a citizen on the outside.

Early Thursday morning, officers intercepted what they believe to be a delivery of two cell phones with chargers, tobacco and $1,000 cash to a WCI correctional officer.

The citizen that was carrying these items, confessed to being in the process of making the delivery to Hawk, a delivery that law enforcement officers witnessed a few minutes later near the prison.

Officers confiscated the items from the correctional officer as he arrived at WCI and placed him under arrest.

Cell phones, tobacco and cash are all considered contraband in a state prison.

Source

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