This article from the LA Times summarizes the contraband cell phone challenges the California prison system is experiencing, with no solution seemingly in sight. However, the one positive and logical approach to this issue is suggested by Najee Ali – co-opt the problem by provisioning secure prison cell phone service, much like secure payphone service is currently offered.

When the nation’s most notorious mass murderer has a phone under the mattress in his cell, it’s hard to ignore the fact that security has broken down in California’s prison system.

And it’s logical to finger prison guards, especially after a state investigation discovered that a guard made $150,000 in one year smuggling phones to prison inmates, and another had 50 phones in his car in a prison parking lot, labeled with the names of convicts.

But cracking down on the most likely culprits isn’t as easy as it sounds. If we try to halt the flow of phones by making guards go through tedious and time-consuming security checks, like airport passengers, we have to pay them for the hours that will take, under an arcane labor deal called “walk time.”

That would cost the state millions of dollars, according to a story by Times reporter Jack Dolan on legislative efforts to approve criminal sanctions.

But abolishing “walk time” isn’t the solution. The provision is a staple of contracts in law enforcement — called “pre- and post-shift activities” in some, and “donning and doffing” in others.

It’s rooted in federal labor laws that compensate employees for work-related tasks they must do before or after their shifts — like travel through locked doors and across prison yards to posts in isolated gun towers.

For California prison guards, that translates to an extra hour of pay each week. Thirty years ago, “we cut a deal with the union,” said Craig Brown, who was part of the state’s negotiating team back then. “We said, ‘We’ll pay you for 12 minutes every day, whether you walk a minute or a half hour.'” It wasn’t considered a perk back then, he said, but a way to keep California on a budget.

Now Brown is on the other side, as chief lobbyist for the union of prison guards. And he bristles at the notion that guards are the bad guys in the cellphone scandal.

“They don’t just come in with employees, they come in by mail, they come in by visitors, they come in over the fence,” he said. “When an inmate wants a phone, somebody is going to supply him.”

Sure. But according to lawmakers, that “somebody” is most likely a prison employee.

Brown, and others before him, said phones in the hands of inmates jeopardize the safety of guards. Inmates have tried to organize institutional riots, escapes and prison crimes.

“The 90-plus percent of our good officers who want these things to run safely want to kick the ass of the guy that brings the cellphones in, because it endangers them,” Brown said. But they’re not willing to spend unpaid time lining up to be herded through metal detectors checking them for contraband phones.

Nor, it seems, are they willing to snitch on colleagues selling phones to convicts. “It’s a difficult individual decision,” he said. “Some officers would probably turn their head and pretend they didn’t see it. And some officers would try to solve the problem.

“Most of them just want to go to work, do their jobs and go home safe.”

Which is probably true for most of the inmates.

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If I take Craig Brown’s word that the typical cellphone smuggler isn’t a corrections officer, then I might as well take Najee Ali’s word that the typical inmate with a contraband cellphone isn’t Charles Manson texting his followers.

Ali, a high-profile activist in Los Angeles’ black community, came home from prison last week. He spent two years behind bars for trying to bribe a witness in a criminal case involving a family member. He served his time at two prisons, Tehachapi and Avenal, in a medium-security dormitory “with three guards watching 1,000 inmates.”

And he kept in touch with folks back home on a BlackBerry he acquired behind bars, purchased for $500 from an inmate “who had a relationship with a guard.”

Inmate cellphones, in Ali’s view, are an “open secret” and a prison-tolerated management technique, he said. They help tamp down tensions among antsy convicts in overcrowded prisons. “If you have half the guys in a dorm with cellphones, that’s 500 guys who are pacified and not a threat to anyone’s safety.”

The idea of Manson with a flip phone fuels our outrage. “But for every person doing something illegal, there are hundreds of guys who just want to talk to their families and keep in touch with what’s going on back home,” he said. “…They’re talking to their mamas, their wives, looking at photos, checking on their Facebook pages.”

Guards look the other way at the black-market deals, he said. A state study showed that a prison employee can make $1,000 on a smuggled phone. “With pay cuts, furloughs, it’s tough for them,” Ali said. “The same guards who are bringing in the cellphones are the ones now acting all up in arms.

“At the end of the day, if the guards did not want us to have those phones, we would not have them,” Ali said. “They know it makes us less of a threat, to them and to each other.”

The worst-case scenarios are pretty bad: inmates on clandestine phones planning escapes, arranging drug deals, ordering hits on enemies.

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But what Ali wanted to talk about was far less troubling: “You share your cellphone with other inmates, that eases a lot of tension throughout the building.

“It brought a sense of normalcy to my life. If we’re being real about this, it’s too far gone to stop it.”

Instead of metal detectors or high-tech scrambling systems, we ought to think about regulating prisoners’ access to cellphones, he said. Why not let some convicts have access — maybe minimum-security inmates or those with good prison behavior records?

“You could restrict the hours, like maybe they could only use them from 7 to 9. Or create a process for handing them out, like you check out a library book,” he said.

Ali’s idea could be a tool to promote order in our overcrowded prison system. And it might make honest men out of those prison guards who are drawn, like criminals, to a black market system.

The post Allowing Phones in The Cells Might Be a Sound Call appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

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.

Source

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A former guard at the Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, OK was ordered Monday to stand trial on a charge of bringing two cell phones and several pouches of tobacco into secure areas of the private prison in Cushing.

Danny James Galbreath, 24, of Broken Arrow, waived his right Monday to a preliminary hearing on the felony count of bringing cell phones into the prison — which are considered contraband in a penal facility.

Galbreath remains free on $15,000 bail pending his arraignment in district court on May 27 on the two-count charge including the misdemeanor count of bringing tobacco into the prison — which is also considered contraband.

Galbreath was arrested at the prison shortly after noon on Jan. 5, by Cushing Police Officer Carson Watts, who was sent there on a report of an employee bringing contraband into the prison, court records show.

Prison Chief of Security Donald Steer told the Cushing officer that an inmate had provided information that Galbreath “has been bringing cellular phones and tobacco into the facility,” Watts wrote in an affidavit.

“Chief Steer then showed me a written statement completed by Corrections Officer Galbreath admitting to bringing in the contraband,” Watts alleged in his affidavit.

“I asked Corrections Officer Galbreath what he has brought into the prison. He told me two cellular phones and several pouches of tobacco,” Watts alleged in his affidavit.

“Corrections Officer Galbreath told me that he received $100 per phone and $50 per pouch of tobacco,” Watts alleged in his affidavit.

“I asked Corrections Officer Galbreath how he got paid to bring in the contraband, and he told me that he had to meet an inmate’s mother at her residence and she gave him the money,” Watts alleged in his affidavit.

“Corrections Officer Galbreath continued to say that he would then take the money, and use a portion of the money to purchase a $20 cell phone or the tobacco,” the affidavit alleged.

Galbreath said he got the phones inside the prison by taping them to the inside of his forearm, the affidavit alleged.

“Corrections Officer Galbreath said that when the metal detectors would go off, the officer would pat-search him, but would not search the underside of his forearm,” the affidavit alleged.

“I asked how he got the tobacco into the prison and he said that he would put the tobacco into bags of chips when he walked into the prison,” the officer alleged in his affidavit.

If convicted of both counts, the former prison guard could be incarcerated for three years and fined $3,000, according to the charges filed by First Assistant District Attorney Mike Kulling.

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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