In July, 2018 the UK’s Prison and Probation Service issued a report that detailed the findings from research that looked at the demand and use of illicit phones in prisons. The report explores the use of smuggled mobile phones in prison in considerable detail, contrasting the views of prison staff and prisoners themselves on why and how prisoners increasingly use mobiles inside prisons.

The aim of the research was to understand what drives the demand for illicit phones by prisoners, what type of prisoners are more likely to want an illicit phone, and to help identify methods that are potentially effective to reduce the supply and demand for illicit phones.

Unique in this report is the effort to identify and address not only the supply side of the contraband prison cell phone equation, but also the demand side drivers.

The varieties and types of  cell phone use by prisoners is captured in the figure below, followed by a description of the different user types identified. The report states, “The typology has been constructed on the basis of a synthesis of the qualitative material and it should be noted that the sample of prisoners interviewed was biased to higher risk prisoners. The synthesis has sought to capture the relative importance of different types of drivers of mobile phones as reported to the researchers, primarily by the prisoner sample. Figure 2 illustrates the typology, providing an indication of the relative importance of the various drivers of use as reported by prisoners, represented by the size of the circles. The overlaps between the circles of different types of users are intended as an indicator of crossover between groups in patterns of motivation and use. The size of the circles is not intended to denote the size of particular groups of mobile phone users; this cannot be deduced from a piece of qualitative research.”

Mobile phone user typology:

Family man
Profile: Partnered/with children. Includes very young fathers, but has older bias.
Motivation: Close to family, contribute as parent from inside, be part of family life.
Usage style: Text and voice. Discreet – aim to retain phone on sustainable basis.
Risk: Low, little cross-over with other aspects of prison economy.
Impact: Sustained relationships. Positive for resettlement/desistance.

Girlfriends/sex talk
Profile: Young men with and without partners.
Motivation: Relationships and intimacy, female company, control, sex, entertainment –presence in outside world.
Usage style: Primary focus text, voice, some picture sharing. Can be discreet – somesharing within close associate clique.
Risk: Medium, some crossover with drugs, some access to restricted numbers.
Impact: Positive for personal relationships and some diffusion of tension/aggression.Some potential for continuation of damaging controlling relationships, relationships with criminal associates.

Economically driven/opportunists
Profile: Multiple sentences, experienced or longer term prisoners.
Motivation: Cost savings and convenience. Some to sort affairs on entry to prison.
Usage style: Text and voice. Mix of phone owners/renters, some occasional use.
Risk: Medium to low. May be some crossover with running external criminal business.
Impact: Medium, some potential for debt, exposure to intimidation and stress.

Display/Rebel
Profile: Young males, testosterone/display-driven, multiple prison terms, often gang-related.
Motivation: Status and build reputation inside/outside prison, display physique, boast to external audience, maintain presence outside world, kick against system.
Usage style: Text and voice, images key, social media.
Risk: Medium to high: some crossover with drug/mobile trafficking, harassment of witnesses/victims, continuation of gang agenda.
Impact: Negative impact on victims/witnesses, impact on reputation of prison service, glamorising negative behaviours/gang cultures – but short-lived.

Dealers
Profile: Dealers in drugs/mobiles or both, both inside prison and, in some cases also running external drug business. Some local gang connected, some OCG links.
Motivation: Financial gain, status, continuation of criminal lifestyle – also used for personal and family communications but primary driver criminal business.
Usage style: Text and voice. May have dominant position in landing hierarchy. Phone typically held by associates or third party, typically weaker, potentially vulnerable prisoners.
Risk: High. Risks to security and good order, central to the illicit prison economy, continuation of external criminal business activities.
Impact: High. Disorder and volatility, debt, intimidation, violence, extortion, both internally and externally to families, potential risks for victims and witnesses and external associates.

Vulnerable holders
Profile: Weak individuals with little status intimidated into holding phones for more powerful and connected prisoners.
Motivation: Fear of more powerful individuals and potential consequences of not agreeing to look after phone. In some cases ‘quid pro quo’ of being able to use phone to contact own family.
Usage style: Often not used personally, in some cases limited text and voice.
Risk: Low risk, primarily to individual if phone detected and confiscated by authorities.
Impact: Secondary effect, primary impact associated with phone owners. Some risk to holders (of debt, retaliation, sanctions) if phone detected and confiscated.

Serious Organised Criminals (SOC)
Profile: Experienced lifestyle criminals, present as ‘model prisoner’.
Motivation: Continuation of criminal business activity, minimise personal exposure to risk and length of time in prison, minimise personal discomfort/restrictions within prison regime.
Usage style: Full functionality device, minimal personal use, maximum deniability, device carried/stored by associates, highly conscious of targeting and intelligence powers.
Risk: Very high – drug dealing and trafficking at scale, risks to witnesses and perversion of course of justice.
Impact: Very high – continuing of scale criminal business has ongoing negative impact on public.

Conclusions:

Regarding the types of contraband prison cell phone users, the report goes on to conclude , “There appeared to be a significant body of mobile phone users for whom the drivers of demand were essentially social and human rather than criminal and for whom the impact of mobile phone use was largely positive, not only in enabling individuals to maintain meaningful relationships with family and loved ones but also in increasing motivation for compliance and desistance. The primary social driver in these cases appears to be prisoners’ deep desire to maintain relationships with loved ones, with the legitimate phone system often being a poor fit with their communication needs and the realities of family lives, partners’ working hours and children’s activities. From the prisoners’ accounts, this appeared to be the most important driver of demand for mobile phones.

Clearly there is a degree of crossover between the criminal and social drivers. Nonetheless, for many prisoners using mobile phones primarily or solely for communications, the social use of mobile phones appeared to have a series of positives associated with it, in contrast to the undoubted risks and harm arising from criminally driven use of mobile phones in prisons. Access to mobile phones appeared to go some way to defusing the frustrations and tensions that are associated with the inadequacy of the legitimate PIN phone system, and thus may also be mitigating the potential for violent confrontations and intimidation which centres on access to these phones.

Against the background of capacity and resource pressure, it could also be argued that access to mobile phones may have also been working to dilute the impact of prisoners being locked up for extended periods and thus mitigating prisoner resentment of increasingly lengthy lock-ins, which might otherwise present a powerful driver for confrontation with prison authorities.

For those with access to them, mobile phones were clearly underpinning prisoners’ ability to maintain meaningful ongoing relationships with family and loved ones and to participate more fully in family life and relationships, with apparent benefits for children and partners as well as prisoners themselves. It could also be argued therefore that mobile phones – and the quality communication with family and loved ones that they facilitated – were acting to support pro-social behaviour and moderate the culture of violence and the inward-looking prison culture.”

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Following a trend in the UK, another prison will install in-cell phones. According to the article, the reasons for this deployment are positive impact on prisoners’ rehabilitation, encouraging the maintenance of family ties, and reducing the prevalence of illegal mobile phones.

Prisoners will have phones installed in their cells under new plans for a Midland prison. The move at HMP Birmingham, which takes inmates from across the Black Country, comes despite a law being introduced last year which made it a crime for inmates to have mobile phones behind bars.

Security firm G4S, which runs the Winson Green prison, is introducing the phones because staff say it can have a ‘positive impact on prisoners’ rehabilitation’.

Prisoners will only be allowed to dial numbers approved by the prison, and each inmate will have to pay their own call charges. Their conversations can also be recorded or listened to for security purposes.

The prison, which has a capacity of 1,450 male adults, already allows inmates to have televisions in their cells at the cost of £1 a week per cell.

It has also emerged that HMP Oakwood in Wolverhampton, had cell phones fitted when it was built in 2012. G4S spokesman Michael Baker said: “Our experience is that in-cell phones can have a positive impact on prisoners’ rehabilitation, not only encouraging the maintenance of family ties, but reducing the prevalence of illegal mobile phones.”

He added: “New prisons are built with in-cell phones and although HMP Birmingham dates back to 1849, we are introducing them into the establishment. Access to telephones, like any other privilege, is dependent on prisoners’ continued good behaviour.”

In March last year the Crime and Security Act was passed which stated that prisoners risked extra time being tagged onto their sentences if they were caught with a mobile phones. It aimed to cut down on prisoners keeping in touch with their criminal contacts while inside.

But in the first eight months of the new laws there were 109 prisoners found with phones at HMP Birmingham, 38 convicts had phones at HMP Featherstone and two at HMP Oakwood.

There are no plans to introduce the phone system in HMP Featherstone which neighbours Oakwood.

Last year it emerged that a permanent police team has been based at Winson Green prison to crack down on drugs being thrown over its walls to inmates.

Two detectives and two intelligence specialists are based behind bars, to stop banned substances being smuggled into the prison and thrown over walls.

The force says it is cheaper to base staff there permanently, despite G4S being on a multi-million pound contract to run the jail, as it stops officers being repeatedly called in to tackle crime.

It comes after 236 occasions of contraband goods, including drugs and mobile phones, some stuffed in tennis balls or footballs, being thrown over HMP Birmingham’s walls in 2011.

G4S, has also fitted netting over exercise yards to stop throw-over attempts hitting the ground.

Source

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Add yet another voice to the growing chorus of high level prison administrators who advocate for increased prisoner access to telecommunications to address a host of problems in prison. Among the reasons Nick Hardwick, Chief Inspector of Prisons in the UK, who heads up the prison system there, gave for this recommendation:

• The illegal use of mobile phones was widespread in most prisons and installing phones in cells would enable more calls to be monitored.
• Making inmates wait to use a phone on the landing and then asking prison officers to control the scrum as prisoners battled for five minutes to talk was a waste of scarce resources.
• In-cell phones would be monitored, with the calls paid for by prisoners and inmates restricted to calling certain pre-approved numbers only.
• I think there are some prisoners where, provided it was properly managed and supervised, it would be efficient and help people to sort themselves out.
• Our experience is that in-cell phones can have a positive impact on prisoners’ rehabilitation, not only encouraging the maintenance of family ties, but reducing the prevalence of illegal mobile phones.

We only have two questions. Where are the American prison leadership thought leaders on this approach? And why install wall phones, when you can deploy wireless prison payphones™ such as the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solutions™ immediately and with no capital cost?

Source
 

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This article by David Yannetti, describes not only the criminal uses of contraband prison cell phones, but also the potentially positive effects on maintaining family ties via a managed and secure prison cell phone solution:

Recent news reports highlight the challenge prison officials face in dealing with the proliferation of cell phone usage in prison across the nation.

Cell phones are nominally prohibited for prisoners in all state and federal prisons, but they turn up by the thousands, and the problem has been made even more difficult with the advent of Smartphones.

With a Smartphone, prisoners may have full access to the Internet, allowing all forms of activity, from contacting friends and family and shopping to directing attacks on other prisoners and criminal activity outside the prison.

Strikes Organized with the Help of Facebook

In Georgia, the New York Times reported, prisoners organized a strike using cellphones and internet applications like Facebook. The protest was concerned with the lack of pay for their work, bad food and limited visitation policies.

Unlike other protests, the prisoners were able to post up-to-minute reports and follow their coverage in the news media.

Prison officials have struggled to come up with a workable solution to prevent this prisoner access to cellphones. Results have been mixed. In California, 11,000 phones were confiscated in 2010. South Carolina collects 2,000 a year.

Some are smuggled in, but many are literally thrown “over the wall.” They have been kicked in soccer and footballs, shot through “potato guns” and are often thrown in packs camouflaged with grass to make it difficult for guards to discover them laying inside the fence.

Search Everyone?

Can’t everyone be searched? Well, yes, but that costs money. California has estimated that searching all employees and contractors entering the prisons within the state system would cost $20 million. Even limited, random searches are calculated to cost $1.3 million annually.

Jam the Signal?

No, the federal Communication Act of 1934 prohibits jamming of radio frequencies.

The most promising technological solution could be the system introduced in Mississippi. Known as managed access, it allows the system to track every call and text. Cellphones that are not on the approved receive a message saying the device is illegal and are disabled.

California, with largest state prison system, will follow the lead of Mississippi and implement a system of managed access. In Mississippi, the system intercepted over 600,000 calls and texts during the six-month trial period.

But…

While the phones may used for criminal or dangerous behavior, there is an aspect of the issue that shouldn’t be ignored. Cellphones are used by prisoners to communicate with their family. The New York Times article notes that David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “Inmates are more likely to successfully re-enter society if they maintain relationships with friends and families.”

A prisoner named Mike is mentioned in the story as regularly speaking with his son when the boy gets off the school bus and when he goes to bed at night. Prison often has a corrosive affect on family relationships, so developing a way to use cellphones to lessen this effect would be helpful. A managed network could be constructed to permit certain prisoners to have operational cell phones, say, as a reward for good behavior.

As the Justice Center of the Council on State Government reports, 77 percent of state prisoners will be released back to their communities.

While it is important to control cellphone usage to for the safety of prison personnel and other inmates, ignoring the needs of inmates who will be released can only lead to increased recidivism and a return of many to prison, carrying with it the all of associated costs to the states that they can ill afford.

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