According to this article, the GAO has just released a study on the use of contraband cell phones in federal prisons. However the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) has not put in place or developed evaluation plans to measure the effectiveness of new technologies to address the smuggled cell phone problem.

Update (4/14): The DOJ just announced that it will require Federal Bureau of Prison halfway houses to boost services for inmates prior to release. The new rules also instruct federal work release facilities to provide cell phone access in order to help inmates seek employment opportunities.

Over the last three years, the number of contraband cell phones seized in federal prisons and minimum-security facilities has quadrupled, according to a report issued by the General Accountability Office.

Corrections officials have been alarmed by the trend because prisoners can make unmonitored calls and can continue criminal activities while behind bars. The Bureau of Prisons needs to do a better job of evaluating technologies to detect the phones, the report says.

In 2008, 1,774 cell phones were seized. By the end of 2010 that number had skyrocketed to 8,656. The report looked at the issue in federal prisons as well as institutions in eight states. The numbers were not complete for all the states, but in California 900 phones were discovered in 2007 and a whopping 10,700 were found in 2010.

Authorities told the GAO that “a combination of easier access to cheaper cell phones, better awareness by staff conducting contraband searches and better collection of intelligence have all contributed to these increases, but it is difficult to determine how much each factor has resulted in increased cell phone confiscations.”

Prison officials have been trying out new technologies to detect inmates using cellular devices. But the report says the Bureau of Prisons “has not developed evaluation plans to measure the effectiveness of these tests.” The GAO also said the Bureau should share more information with state prison officials about promising technologies.

The report was completed in July but an edited version was not made available to the public until Tuesday. Details about how inmates manage to get the phones and the technologies used to detect them were taken out. But the document does say the Bureau of Prisons has tried out a radio frequency sensor system in two institutions. The sensors show when a cell phone is being used and shows the approximate location of the phone on a computer screen.

CTIA-the Wireless Association issued a statement saying the GAO did not recommend jamming cell phone signals, an action the group opposes. GAO official David Maurer said GAO was not asked to assess any particular technology for countering cell phone use by prisoners.

In federal prisons, more than three-quarters of the phones were seized in minimum-security prison camps rather than facilities housing more dangerous inmates.

But when dangerous inmates had access to phones, the consequences often were grave. The report says in 2007 an inmate at a Maryland detention center ordered the murder of a witness to his crimes using a contraband phone. In another instance from 2008, a death row inmate in a Texas state prison used a cell phone to threaten a state senator and his family.

Some inmates run illegal businesses to make money. The GAO report says in January 2011 an inmate at a federal prison was sentenced to an additional 14 years in prison for operating an identity theft ring with the crucial help of a cell phone.

The GAO report also provides details on the costs prisoners typically pay to make sanctioned phone calls to family and friends. The GAO says “some prison advocates believe that inmates are increasingly using contraband phones because of the rates correctional institutions charge for telephone service.”

However, the GAO says being able to make calls that aren’t monitored by prison officials allows inmates to engage in crime.

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This article demonstrates that contraband prison cell phones are a problem around the world. Also, that jamming prison cell phones can work in tandem with a secure cell phone service by only allowing the authorized prison cell phones to place calls through the jammer.

The striking thing about mobile phones in American prisons is not that they exist—though they do, in great numbers—but the ingenuity used to get and keep them. There are the usual entry methods: from visitors, corrupt guards or in packages hurled over the fence. But phones often take more exotic paths. In South Carolina a potato gun was used to fire phones over prison walls from a distance of a third of a mile. In Mississippi a suspiciously heavy and bounceless basketball in the recreation yard was found to contain 19 phones and chargers.

Mobile phones in prison have been used not merely to continue criminal enterprises, but also to arrange hits on witnesses, corrections officers and rival gang members, and to procure drops of other contraband over prison walls. They also represent the loss of a good deal of revenue for state prison systems: the people whom inmates call on ordinary phones generally pay high connection and per-minute fees. In many states a portion of those fees goes to the prison system. Between 2007 and 2009, for instance, the number of calls made using Mississippi’s prison-phone system fell from 296,446 to 146,855, and the revenue thus derived declined nearly 31%.

Some state prisons would like to try jamming. This is done in a few other countries, including India and New Zealand, but it is illegal in America. (Exceptions have been carved out for some federal agencies at specified times; during Barack Obama’s inauguration, for instance, mobiles were jammed along the parade route.) The CTIA, an advocacy group for the wireless communication industry, says jamming is too blunt a tool: it is hard to jam mobile phones throughout an entire prison without extending the effects outside the prison walls, and rendering the phones of prison staff and emergency responders ineffective as well. Others dispute these charges; they say the jamming radius could be calibrated to end at the prison walls. A bill to allow state prisons to jam mobile phones has passed the Senate but languishes in the House, and it is unlikely that the exceptions sought by state corrections commissioners will be granted.

So they have turned to other means. This summer one of Mississippi’s prisons installed a system known as managed access—the first such installation in a mainland American prison, though a prototype has been tested in Puerto Rico. Managed access—developed jointly by Tecore Networks, a network-infrastructure firm, and Global Tel*Link (GTL), which provides communications tools to prisons—blankets an area in a radio-frequency umbrella that captures all mobile-phone calls made within it.

If the call comes from a number that has been pre-approved, such as a warden or guard’s phone, the system sends the call out to a commercial carrier, which completes it just as it would a call on the outside. But if a call comes from a number that has not been approved, the system blocks it. It does not block 911 (emergency) calls, nor does it disrupt calls in progress that happen to pass through the umbrella’s edges, such as one a civilian might make while driving on a road near a prison. The system retains details of the handset and SIM card attempting illicit calls for subsequent blocking. In its first month of operation in Mississippi the system has already blocked no fewer than 216,320 calls. Bad news for the potato guns.

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