A news report about smuggled cell phone sniffing dogs used in the Arizona Department of Corrections. Highlights from the report include:

• The dogs spend 9 weeks — 320 hours — learning how to detect cell phones.

• Contraband wireless phones that can be bought for as little as $40 on the outside go for as much as $800-1,200 on the inside. They’re smuggled in by friends and family during visits, by staff, even purchased during work detail.

• The dogs are taught to locate and alert DOC officers to four distinct chemicals found in cell phones — ferric chloride, used to etch circuit board, rosin, promotes soldering, epoxy, used to fabricate the printed circuit board and lithium ion, gas from the battery.

• One dog is stationed in every Arizona state prison, except the Phoenix facility, which is much smaller than the others.

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This presentation on controlling contraband cell phones in prison provides an overview of the problem, of the supply-side strategies currently deployed and of meshDETECT’s secure prison cell phone solution.

To learn more, also download our whitepaper, “Reducing the Demand for Contraband Cell Phones in Correctional Facilities.”

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This article discusses the legislative initiative to make it a felony in Idaho to smuggle contraband such as cell phones into prison. One interesting fact is that the Idaho Department of Corrections confiscated a cell phone that had been used over 33,000 times in six months. As we have written before, wireless is the new prison currency, and it’s likely that some of this cell phone’s airtime was traded to other prisoners for favors and other contraband.

The Idaho Department of Correction says it’s a growing problem they need to stop — cell phones illegally obtained by prisoners behind bars.

IDOC says in 2010, 18 cell phones were confiscated from prisoners.

They’re hoping Idaho lawmakers will pass stricter regulations to help put a stop to this activity.

“It has quickly grown to be the biggest problem that we’re facing,” said Deputy Warden Tim Higgins. “A cell phone that comes inside the institution can be used by an offender to do their criminal activity even while they’re incarcerated.”

IDOC recently confiscated a cell phone from a known gang leader serving time in prison. The phone had been used more than 33,000 times in six months, including text messages and calls.

The cell phones and other contraband get into the hands of offenders in a number of different ways.

IDOC says contraband is passed during visiting hours from an outsider, through secret drops and sometimes even through prison staff themselves. The contraband is often concealed in body cavities.

Cell phones can go for big bucks in prison. A regular cell phone typically sells for around $300, while a smartphone with Internet access costs around $1,200. Higgins says one inmate confessed to shelling out $3,000 for a smartphone.

“Right now if we intercept a cell phone coming into the institution all we can do is send the person away,” said Higgins.

That’s why the department is asking the Legislature to give the law more teeth. Right now, passing major contraband is considered a misdemeanor under the current Idaho law, but they’re hoping to change that.

The proposed law would make it a felony for smuggling a controlled substance, more than three ounces of tobacco, firearms or dangerous weapons, or any telecommunication device into a prison or jail.

“We need to be able to keep our facilities and our communities as safe as we can and this is a tool that will help us carry that out,” said Director Brent Reinke.

The bill has been introduced in a Senate committee. IDOC officials are confident Idaho lawmakers will pass this legislation.

Source

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An interesting overview of the problems smuggled cell phones in prison create in jails throughout the United States. As usual however, the discussion of possible solutions focuses on reducing supply and signal jamming, but offers no consideration of a strategy reducing the DEMAND for contraband cell phones.

By co-opting prisoners’ legitimate desire for more frequent and easier telephone access to family, prisons can reduce the overall demand for contraband cell phones and reduce the incentive to smuggle them into jails. This demand can be met by offering prisoners the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution.

Devices behind bars can have deadly results. Jamming could aid in the fight, but bugs need to be worked out.

Guards found the dead tomcat last summer, lying between two fences that separate inmates at Phillips State Prison in Buford from the outside world.

Curiously, the cat’s belly had been stitched together, so suspicious prison officials took a closer look. Inside the animal, they found eight cellphones. Someone had tried to toss the dead feline over both fences, but the throw fell short.

At Hancock State Prison, a basketball filled with 50 cellphones was rolled through a hole in a perimeter fence. A guard at the same prison allegedly tried to smuggle in a phone wrapped in aluminum foil, disguised as a baked potato.

Georgia prison officials say cellphone smuggling is the most pressing problem they face. Cellphones are such a hot commodity inside the walls they’re being confiscated by the thousands.

And officials say the phones are a menace, wreaking havoc inside and outside the cell blocks. Phones are used to coordinate attacks inside the prison walls and are enabling inmates to continue criminal activity outside of prison. They’ve been used to threaten witnesses and coordinate simultaneous protests at multiple prisons.

“They present a clear and present threat, not only to the inmates themselves but to our staff and to the public,” Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens said. “They’re not about calling mom on Thanksgiving. They’re for power, money and gangs. It’s a big business and a tremendous problem.”

Over a one-year period ending in July, corrections officials confiscated more than 8,700 illegal cellphones, Owens said. “And if we’ve confiscated 8,700 cellphones, the question I have is how many have we not been able to seize?”

Behind bars, the cellphones, mostly prepaid, cost $200 to $600 each.

Owens said a jamming device that blocks cellphone signals would allow prison systems to combat the problem. But the Federal Communications Commission has not allowed states to use it, despite a report from the National Institute of Justice that indicates cellphone use is a problem at prisons across the country:

*In Texas, a death row inmate who killed four people used a cellphone to threaten a state senator, prompting a lockdown of the entire prison system.

*In Nevada, a prison dental assistant was convicted of helping an inmate get a cellphone to plan a successful escape.

*In South Carolina, a captain in charge of intercepting prison contraband was shot six times in the chest at his home after an inmate used a cellphone to call an ex-con to carry out the hit.

Even the most dangerous inmates — those who are the most closely monitored — have been caught with cellphones.

While Fulton County courthouse killer Brian Nichols awaited trial in jail, someone smuggled phones to him on two occasions. Nichols, who was later convicted of killing a judge, a deputy and another man in the courthouse rampage, used the phones to plot an escape and send lewd photos of himself to his pen-pal girlfriend.

Last year, California prison officials found a cellphone on notorious mass murderer Charles Manson — the second one found on him in two years.

In Georgia, it is a felony to smuggle a cellphone into prison, with a maximum punishment of five years behind bars. The prison system asks the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to extend sentences by six months for all inmates caught with cellphones.

But the smuggling hasn’t landed only inmates in hot water. Last year, 312 civilians and 59 prison staff members were charged with trying to smuggle contraband inside state prisons, and most cases involved cellphones, Owens said.

Owens, who has overseen the system since 2009, says he has an easy answer when asked what his biggest problem is.

“It’s not our budget, not staffing, not infrastructure, not overcrowding,” he said. “It’s cellphones.”

Before cellphones, inmates could only use prison pay phones, and officials decided who inmates could call, when they could call and how much time they could spend on the phone. The calls were recorded. But inmates say cellphones are much less costly than the expensive collect calls paid for by their families.

On Nov. 28, Gov. Nathan Deal wrote the FCC, asking it to reconsider its position on the use of jamming devices to disrupt cellphone calls in prisons. Deal noted that two recent disturbances at state prisons “only continue to underscore the nationwide epidemic of illegal cellphone usage in prison facilities across the United States.”

The incidents — one at Telfair State Prison, the other at Hancock State Prison — left 15 inmates hospitalized and a guard with a leg injury, Deal wrote. Illegal cellphones were found to be the catalysts behind the two fights, the governor wrote.

Deal said prison officials have investigated a number of technologies to fight cellphone use in prison and are convinced that cellphone “jammers” are the most cost-efficient and timely response.

“Carving out an exception for the use of this technology in prison facilities is sound policy to protect inmates, corrections employees and the public,” he wrote.

The FCC shares Deal’s concerns and is working with prison authorities and others to address the matter, a commission spokesman said. There are concerns, however, that the technology poses a risk of interfering with legal calls outside the prison grounds, including calls to public safety, the spokesman said.

Other states use dogs to sniff out illegal cellphones. At least two states have used a technology that, instead of jamming calls, prevents calls from reaching their destination. But Owens said those methods are too costly. He estimated that “managed access” technology would cost the prison system millions of dollars. Using dogs to find cellphones also would end up being too expensive, he said, because he would have to hire and train dozens of new corrections officers.

Tod Burke, a criminal justice professor at Radford University in Virginia who has studied the issue, said there are legitimate concerns that jamming devices could disable phones used by law enforcement.

“If I’m driving by as a police officer, I’d be concerned whether a jamming device inside a prison is going to jam my own frequency,” Burke said. “But the technology is advancing and can probably be isolated enough so that it’s not going to interfere with phones outside the prison setting. And in rural areas, where many prisons are located, who are you going to interfere with anyway?”

District Attorney Fred Bright said cellphone smuggling is a big problem in his sprawling eight-county circuit, which includes a number of Middle Georgia and east Georgia prisons.

His office prosecutes 40 to 50 cases a year involving inmates, prison workers and visitors, he said. This included an indictment against a guard caught trying to sneak in a cellphone he’d stuffed inside a fish sandwich, Bright said.

The GBI is investigating a cellphone smuggling case at a unspecified prison in Middle Georgia, said the agency’s director, Vernon Keenan. It began as a drug smuggling case but has broadened in scope, he said.

Keenan added that the GBI is often called in when there are assaults inside the prison system and during those investigations agents have learned that cellphones were involved in coordinating the attacks.

One prison inmate recently killed a fellow inmate during an argument over a cellphone, Owens said, declining to give more details because the investigation is ongoing.

Federal prosecutors in Atlanta recently convicted Carlos Garcia for using a cellphone smuggled to him inside Valdosta State Prison to transfer $250 from a 93-year-old woman’s credit union account to his inmate account.

The 36-year-old inmate had obtained the victim’s credit union account numbers and PIN number from an accomplice, who had stolen the woman’s wallet while she was shopping in Conyers.

At the time, Garcia was serving a 10-year term for identity theft and fraud convictions in DeKalb County. After transferring the money to his prison account, he tried to steal again from the elderly victim, who had $120,000 in the bank, prosecutors said.

Garcia used his cellphone to make online purchases. But, by that time, law enforcement officials were already onto the scheme and blocked the transactions.

Prosecutors said the inmate was charged with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft after he called the credit union to find out why the charges were not going through.

Source

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An interesting article about the growth of gangs in prison in Idaho and the increase in smuggled contraband cell phones as a result. Part of the strategy, as in other states such as California, is a legistative initiative to increase the penalty for smuggling cell phones. The article quotes an official, “We want to make it a felony to introduce cellphones within a prison. If they can make calls without going through the monitored phone system, they can coordinate attacks, they can coordinate riots. They can continue to operate as a leader while they’re incarcerated.” The meshDETECT secure cell phone solution monitors all calls made through our cell phones.

Nearly half of the 392 inmates at Idaho’s maximum-security prison last month were identified as gang members. And of the 7,145 total prisoners at the state’s varied prisons and work centers, more than 18 percent — 1,311 — were identified as gang members. That’s up from about 16 percent in May 2010.

“It’s not a drastic increase, but we have definitely seen the numbers go up,” said Deputy Warden Tim Higgins, the Department of Correction’s longtime gang expert. “Every facility has gang members. Men, women, close custody, minimum security.”

Gang-related violence, reportedly on the decline in Canyon County and other communities in recent years, is a growing problem within the prison system.

“Eighty-four percent of all of our violent acts inside the prisons involved one or more gang members,” Higgins said. That statistic comes from a study at the end of 2008, he said, but the trend hasn’t abated.

WORKING TOGETHER

Spread among Idaho’s eight state-run prisons (two more are privately operated) and five community work centers, Higgins and the 27 IDOC investigators who focus on gangs have a lot to handle. And one of their chief challenges is to make sure incarcerated gang leaders can’t maintain their grip on communities from within prison walls.

That can be a daunting task, since those gang leaders have plenty of time and motivation to come up with creative ways to outwit their captors with smuggled cell phones or Facebook pages maintained in their names by friends or family outside prison.

IDOC investigators work closely with local law enforcement agencies to share intelligence and control the flow of information and contraband between inmates and free gang members.

One recent investigation started with intelligence gathered in a prison mailroom and eventually involved 13 agencies, two states and three years. Dubbed Operation Black Magic, it led to state and federal charges last spring against 30 members of the Brown Magic Clica, a gang active in eastern Oregon and Southwest Idaho.

Eight of those arrested were already in prison. The cases are at various stages in the court system.

“It started with a mailroom officer who intercepted a piece of mail about a gang-related hit that was going to happen in Nyssa,” Higgins said.

Investigators contacted local police, who warned the intended victim and worked with IDOC to monitor communication between gang members inside and outside prison. The Treasure Valley METRO Violent Crimes Task Force stepped in and unraveled a web of conspiracy and Clica crime.

UNDER THE RADAR

Prison gang numbers could be significantly higher than investigators know, Higgins said. Many gangs, like Brown Magic, operate in rural areas where law enforcement doesn’t have the manpower to track and document gang members.

Members of those gangs, sent to prison for drug crimes or other offenses, could slip under the prisons’ radar if they don’t sport telltale tattoos or brandish gang signs.

“More than 50 percent of the gang members fall into that category,” Higgins said.

Prison staff trained in the ways of gangs often can identify gang members through their behavior, he said. Even those whose skin advertises a gang affiliation are ultimately judged by their behavior, not their markings, he said.

“We track very closely all evidence of gang affiliation, but we try to avoid labeling people,” he said. “We believe somebody can change.”

INTERMIXING AND ACCOUNTABILITY

The keys to prison gang management and intelligence gathering, Higgins said, are vigilance, accountability and not segregating gang members.

Idaho inmates aren’t sorted by gang affiliation, he said, since that strengthens the cliques and traps those who want to break free.

Instead, he said, inmates are expected to mix whether they’re among rivals or people with no gang background.

And then they’re watched very closely.

“We have absolute zero tolerance,” he said. “If we see three suspected gang members having a meeting, we jump on it.”

Mixing prisoners and holding them accountable for their behavior has worked well in the state-run prisons, he said, but may not be the model in the private Idaho Correctional Center, where Idaho’s biggest problems with gang-related violence occur.

ASSAULTS ABOUND

Run by Corrections Corp. of America, ICC is Idaho’s largest prison, and nearly 19 percent of its 2,000-plus inmates are suspected gang members. The 11-year-old private prison has drawn numerous lawsuits from inmates, and a recent Associated Press investigation showed ICC prisoners are more than twice as likely to be assaulted as those at other Idaho prisons.

Higgins, who was promoted to deputy warden overseeing the state’s contract with private prisons just weeks ago, said ICC has improved its handling of gang violence. One of his primary focuses will be to help them improve more.

The private prison operates under contract with the state and is required to comply with Department of Correction policy on gang management, which is different from the approach in other states where Corrections Corp. runs prisons, he said.

Gang violence is still all too common in the state-run prisons, too, he said, but one positive sign is that gang-related assaults now tend to be less severe because inmates know they’ll be prosecuted if they cause serious injury. That’s especially true at ICC, he said, where the total number of assaults has held fairly steady but the brutality has eased.

“If it’s simple battery, it’s a misdemeanor, but with aggravated battery that’s some hard time, plus gang enhancements,” Higgins said, referring to the additional two years for gang-related crime called for under Idaho’s five-year-old gang enforcement law.

“I wish we could stop it totally, but it’s kind of built into their (gang) culture.”

With the new gang law and concerted investigative effort, Canyon County police and prosecutors have put a dent in once-soaring gang violence statistics. In Caldwell alone, police went from investigating 100 drive-by shootings in one month of 2004 to having about eight total in the past four years.

“We’ve certainly seen less of that than two years ago,” said Ellie Somoza, a deputy prosecutor who’s handled Canyon County gang cases for the past six years. “The felony crimes we’ve filed charges on have all resulted in felony convictions, and most of them have gone to state prison.”

LEGISLATIVE WISH LISTS

With the legislative session approaching, Higgins has two gang-related proposals he hopes will become law this winter. Somoza said her prime legislative objective, which likely will have to wait a year, is changing the law so any juvenile who commits a drive-by shooting would be automatically tried as an adult.

Although the incidents are down appreciably in the past few years, she said, Canyon County has seen far too many instances in which gangs chose underage shooters to spray homes or cars with bullets, on the assumption they won’t face more than a couple of years in juvenile detention.

“There’s nothing more dangerous than a drive-by shooting,” Somoza said. “It’s an absolute disregard for human life. You never know who’s inside and who’ll get hit.”

Underage shooters have proven to be particularly reckless, she said, recalling one Caldwell spree of 11 drive-bys in just a few days. The five juveniles involved chose their targets so casually, she said, that one of the houses they shot up was a rental where “someone just thought they remembered that someone from a rival gang used to live there.”

Higgins’ legislative wish list aims to make it harder for gangs to operate from prison.

One proposed bill, aimed at drying up a key money-making endeavor for prison gangs, would make it a felony to smuggle into prison or possess in prison more than a certain amount — probably 3 ounces — of tobacco.

“A can of Bugler (a brand of roll-your-own tobacco) you could buy for 99 cents on sale is worth $40 inside the prison,” he said. “And the gangs are nearly always in control of any big quantity of tobacco.”

The other law he hopes will pass this winter would fight one of the biggest problems gang investigators face: contraband phones.

“We want to make it a felony to introduce cellphones within a prison,” Higgins said. “If they can make calls without going through the monitored phone system, they can coordinate attacks, they can coordinate riots. They can continue to operate as a leader while they’re incarcerated.

“But right now if we catch them with a cellphone, it’s just a disciplinary offense, and it doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

In the past year, prison staff confiscated 18 cellphones from inmates, and there are likely numerous others they never found. Officials don’t know who smuggled them in or how, he said, but all of the devices found were prepaid phones that are hard to trace to individuals — especially since savvy prisoners conceal the SIM cards separately from the phones.

IDOC has some cellphone detection equipment, including a phone-sniffing dog at the medium-security Idaho State Correctional Institution. Officials hope to add more sophisticated equipment soon.

“It’s a huge deal,” Higgins said. “If we lock someone up in prison, we need to make sure they can’t continue to do business and do harm to the community. If they do, I take great offense at that.”

Source

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This article is another example of the corrupting influence of the demand for cell phones in prison. The demand for smuggled cell phones, like the demand for drugs in prison, drives the economic incentives to supply this demand. In addition to supply prevention, the satisfaction of demand, using a secure cell phone solution like meshDETECT will reduce the economic incentives to supply contraband cell phones.

Agents with the Alabama Department of Corrections arrested a correctional officer on suspicion of smuggling drugs and cell phones into Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore.

Leonard Purter has resigned and was initially taken to the Elmore County Jail, said Brian Corbett, a DOC spokesman.

Purter made bond and was released from jail Tuesday, court documents show.

DOC agents arrested Purter on Sunday morning for allegedly trying to bring various pills, marijuana and cell phones into the prison.

Purter had been employed with the DOC since July 31, 2007, Corbett said.

According to documents filed in Elmore County district court, Purter is accused of possessing about eight ounces of marijuana, a total of 173 pills and 14 cell phones with batteries and chargers.

The DOC continues to investigate the incident, Corbett said.

“This is just one example of the ADOC’s diligence in trying to keep contraband out of our facilities,” he said.

Purter has an unlisted phone number, and it is unknown whether he has hired an attorney.

Source

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The following editorial is a response to one written earlier regarding contraband prison cell phone signal jamming. In it the author, an official of the Maryland DOC states, “Corrections systems must invest, innovate, develop partnerships and educate themselves in order to gain the necessary capabilities to fight this problem.” This is very true, but all the approaches he mentions are related to smuggled cell phone interdiction and detection. None of the solutions contemplate proactively reducing the contraband value of smuggled cell phones by offering prisoners a secure cell phone solution in order to siphon off legitimate usage (prisoners who simply want to stay in touch with friends and family) and thereby reduce the contraband value of smuggled wireless phones. It is time for DOC officials to consider addressing the root cause of the problem (demand) in a addition to spending money on detection and interdiction.

Terry Bittner’s assertion that cell phones in Maryland’s prisons are an issue is correct. This is an issue in every state. His assertion that Maryland is focusing on a single solution — cell phone blocking — is inaccurate. And his insinuation that we are not doing enough is wrong (“Cell phone blocking isn’t the only answer for Md. Prisons,” June 15).

There is no one single solution to meeting the challenge of illegal cell phones in prisons. In the absence of jamming, which is generally illegal in the United States, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has conducted more than 20 months of research on all available technologies to better understand which cellular detection, managed access or jamming applications would work best in our prisons. This includes a multi-vendor pilot demonstration in the summer of 2009 and several subsequent long term single-vendor pilots.

But not waiting on a technological solution, we have attacked and significantly slowed the flow of cell phones on several fronts including: developing better intelligence, investing in better entrance and scanning technology, innovating approaches like using cell phone sniffingdogs, and data mining interdicted cell phones to help local prosecutors build better cases on inmates found with phones.

Better intelligence has made gang communication within our prisons increasingly more difficult and has become integral to gaining convictions for many Black Guerilla Family gang members in the past two years (alluded to by Mr. Bittner). Our $1.1 million entrance scanning technology has increased the percentage of cell phones captured before they make it inside our prisons by more than 10 percent through April of fiscal year 2011 compared to fiscal year 2010; our dogs have found almost 500 phones since 2008; and with our new forensics intelligence gathering abilities we are seeing close to a 90 percent conviction rate in the cell phone cases states’ attorneys are now taking to court.

None of this is guaranteed to stop all cell phones from getting into our prisons, but it has decreased the flow — by 32 percent in 2010 compared to 2009. But more importantly, these targeted efforts have helped make our prisons safer for staff and offenders. Serious assaults on staff have fallen by 50 percent from 2007 to 2010. On offenders they have fallen 35 percent.

Corrections systems must invest, innovate, develop partnerships and educate themselves in order to gain the necessary capabilities to fight this problem. Maryland has become a national leader in cell phone interdiction, and our efforts have been reported on by media here in Maryland and nationally.

Mr. Bittner’s comments misrepresent and cloud the exhaustive efforts we have made, not only to slow the flow of cell phones inside our prisons, but also to identify truly effective anti-cellular technologies and the best practices of their use.

Gary D. Maynard

The writer is secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Source

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This news article discusses the contraband prison cell phone problem in the Florida DOC. Secure prison cell phone service is a solution to this issue.

A cell phone can be a lifesaver, but in the hands of a dangerous criminal, it can be used to threaten someone’s life. That’s why cell phones in prison are considered dangerous weapons, but plenty of inmates end up with a cell in their cellblock.

Phones are smuggled into prisons inside cakes, shower shoes, even body cavities and then well hidden.

“They’ll unbolt the toilet from the floor, then put the cell phone in cellophane to keep the moisture away, and then hide it under the toilet,” said Kevin Dean, head of Florida’s Contraband Interdiction Team for the Department of Corrections.

The problem is nationwide. Thousands of phones have been confiscated in California

“They plan escapes and coordinate escapes with them. We have evidence of this. We have evidence that they threaten witnesses, threaten victims,” offered Terry Thornton, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections.

Charles Manson even managed to get his hands on a phone on two separate occasions.
Manson called people across country and right here in Florida from behind prison walls, according to the California department of corrections.

“I’ve seen the world spinning on fire. I’ve danced and sang in the devil’s choir,” Manson told an answering machine, according to the TV show Inside Edition.

Cell phones are worth big money behind bars. One guard in California reportedly made $140,000 smuggling them in before he was caught. Here in Florida, inmates also have help getting their hands on phones.

“They’re smuggled in through our visitation process. They’re dropped off at work squad sites. We’ve caught vendors coming in that have developed a relationship with a particular inmate,” Dean continued.

So what do the numbers look like in Florida? Since the state passed a law making it a felony back in 2008, 2,688 phones have been confiscated.

Last year, there were 152 cell phone incidents involving staff and contractors. According to the Department of Corrections, most were likely innocent mistakes, but sometimes guards are to blame.

Investigators arrested and charged two guards in July of 2010 with smuggling cell phones into the Graceville Correctional Facility in Florida’s Panhandle.

According to the arrest affidavit, guard Tyler Daniels “…had an arrangement with an inmate incarcerated at the prison who was to pay him $1,000 per package to deliver them inside the institution.”

One package contained three phones. Guard Matthew Crawford is accused of helping him. They’ve pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

To fight back, Florida’s DOC now has two phone-sniffing dogs, named Uno and Razor, to try and prevent inmates from ever getting a whiff of the outside.

Those caught smuggling cell phones into prisons can be charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Source

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