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.”

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This article is about yet another prison guard caught smuggling a contraband cell phone into jail. Given the high price paid by inmates for an illegal cell phone, the corruption of prison guards has become all to commonplace. A reduction of the contraband value of smuggled cell phones through the deployment of the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution will change the economics of this problem and reduce prison cell phone smuggling without the high cost of wireless jammers.

A former San Joaquin County jailer arrested for allegedly smuggling a cell phone to an inmate pleaded guilty Thursday to unlawfully accessing a computer database, according to court documents.

The guilty plea of Michael George McCann, 41, almost guarantees his career in law enforcement is over, said San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Donald Vaughn.

“I don’t know of any law enforcement agency anywhere that would hire a convicted felon,” Vaughn said in a telephone interview Thursday afternoon.

McCann was arrested on Jan. 6 after an investigation uncovered he had allegedly smuggled a cell phone into the jail. The prosecution had photographic evidence of McCann meeting an inmate’s significant other at a convenience store and receiving money, Vaughn said.

While he faced multiple charges in connection to the smuggling and unlawful access, the bulk of the charges were thrown out in the interest of justice, according to court documents.

Although he may not serve any time behind bars as part of his plea, Vaughn said he was pleased with the outcome because it shows the public wrongdoing will not be tolerated.

“He’s leaving here as a convicted felon on probation,” he said.

Vaughn would not speculate what McCann’s motive was for accessing the database.

The situation is an unfortunate one because it taints the image of the county and its justice system, the prosecutor said.

“It’s a sad case for all of law enforcement,” he said. “Citizens have to be able to trust law enforcement officers in order for them to do their job; people like McCann really hurt the community.”

McCann had been an employee of the San Joaquin Sheriff’s office since January of 2002, Sheriff’s spokesperson Les Garcia previously said. The department did not comment on McCann’s plea because he is no longer an employee.

Officials also declined comment on if procedures or protocols for correctional officers have changed since McCann’s arrest.

The former correction officer will be sentenced September 23. He could face between 0 days and 1 year in jail, Vaughn said. A probation report will be prepared prior to his sentencing to give the judge an objective look at what his punishment should be, Vaughn said.

“How much time he spends in jail, if any, will be up to the judge,” he said.

McCann’s lawyer, Gary Lacy, could not be reached for comment.

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More evidence of the worldwide nature of the contraband prison cell phone problem, this time from Costa Rica.

A police raid at Costa Rica’s La Reforma prison turns up large amounts of contraband, and reveals criminal networks operating within the jail.

Police on Thursday seized 580 homemade knives, large quantities of liquor, marijuana and crack, cellphones and other forbidden items during a raid at Costa Rica’s trouble-plagued La Reforma prison 20 km northwest of the capital San José.

In addition to the weapons, which police say inmates likely fabricated inside the prison, Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) agents and prison guards also confiscated 68 liters of liquor and 10 cellphones, said OIJ assistant Francisco Segura.

The maximum security La Reforma prison has frequently made the news since a violent May 11 prison escape attempt that resulted in the deaths of two inmates and a prison guard. During the three-hour standoff, inmates used handguns, fragmentation grenades and knives to take guards and other prisoners as hostages. Inmates also obtained a set of master keys to open cell doors in the prison’s maximum-security block.

Police also uncovered that some inmates had been operating a criminal extortion network from within the prison, using prohibited cellphones. The contraband seized during Thursday’s raid confirms Costa Rican prisons are plagued with corruption.

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