An update on the progress of a proposed law in Michigan to add tougher penalties to the law prohibiting contraband cell phone use by prisoners. The article states, “Roesler said the main concern with inmates possessing a cellphone has more to do with security than the inmate being able to call out of the jail. With the cell phones now, they act as cameras and computers as a way to communicate and receive information. They can receive intelligence information and take pictures of corrections officers and witnesses. It could be a major security breach.”

Contraband cell phone use can be reduced by offering an alternative such as the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution. These phones have no cameras or internet access.

Two proposed bills — worked on by Muskegon County’s sheriff and state senator, and which would raise the penalties for possession and use of cellphones by inmates — is working its way through the Legislature.

The bills would amend current law to prohibit state prisoners and county jail inmates from possessing a cellphone and prohibit anyone from furnishing them with a cellphone.

Under the bills, violators of the ban would face a felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison, a maximum fine of $1,000 or both. Currently, inmates found in possession of cellphones face confiscation of the devices and losses of privileges.

The legislation currently is before the House Judiciary Committee. The state Senate passed the bills, Senate Bills No. 551 and No. 552, on votes of 34-3 in September, sending them to the House.

Muskegon County Sheriff Dean Roesler and state Sen. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, collaborated on the proposed legislation. Hansen is the primary sponsor of the bills.

Roesler said the main concern with inmates possessing a cellphone has more to do with security than the inmate being able to call out of the jail.

“With the cell phones now, they act as cameras and computers as a way to communicate and receive information,” Roesler said. “They can receive intelligence information and take pictures of corrections officers and witnesses. It could be a major security breach.”

Hansen called cellphone use by inmates and prisoners “a real safety concern.”

“They could call witnesses outside the jail or prison, coordinate a guard’s movements,” Hansen said. “There could be some real danger.”

The language of the proposed legislation prohibits use by inmates and prisoners of all wireless communication devices.

In addition, the proposed legislation calls for cellphones and other devices confiscated as contraband to be donated to Cell Phones For Soldiers Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing deployed and returning troops cost-free methods to communicate with family while serving in the U.S. military.

Roesler said he was pleased to learn the bills passed the Senate and anticipated the potential benefits of the proposed changes to the law.

Currently, “an inmate bringing or possessing a cellphone in the jail would only have administrative sanctions, a loss of privileges, like TV or trustee status,” he said, pointing to the criminal charges proposed with the legislation being considered.

Hansen said he will push for the bills’ consideration by the state House.

“We’ll keep working on it because it’s common sense,” Hansen said. “What do you do if you’re in the sheriff’s position, because you don’t have any punishment.”

Source

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This bill and associated executive order are an attempt to hinder the smuggling of contraband cell phones into California prisons. These legislative efforts may slow the supply of cell phones, but they will not eliminate it.

Just as illegal drugs continue to flow into prisons around the country, contraband cell phone smuggling is supply meeting demand. Until a strategy to address the fundamental demand for more communications between prisoners and their loved ones is also addressed, the contraband value of smuggled cell phones will remain high and supply will continue flow into prisons. The meshDETECT secure cell phone solution can be a part of that demand-side strategy.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation this morning toughening restrictions on illicit cellphones in prisons, and he ordered prison officials to step up efforts to confiscate smuggled phones.

Senate Bill 26, by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, makes it a misdemeanor to deliver a cellphone to a prison inmate, among other things. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed similar legislation last year, saying it was too soft on inmates who carry phones and on guards and others who smuggle them.

Brown also issued an executive order instructing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to increase physical searches of people who enter prisons and to develop a system to interrupt unauthorized cellphone calls.

Brown said in his order that prison staff discovered nearly 10,700 contraband cellular devices in 2010, and 7,300 in the first half of this year.

“Prisons exist to remove individuals from our communities who would otherwise do harm to their fellow citizens,” Brown said in a prepared statement. “When criminals in prison get possession of a cell phone, it subverts the very purpose of incarceration. They use these phones to organize gang activity, intimidate witnesses and commit crimes. Today’s action will help to break up an expanding criminal network and protect law-abiding Californians.”

Source

The post Jerry Brown Signs Prison Cellphone Bill appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

The California Senate voted unanimously Thursday to make smuggling a cellphone into prison a misdemeanor crime with up to a $5,000 fine – a bill similar to one that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed as too weak.

The senator who carried last year’s legislation, Los Angeles Democrat Alex Padilla, is also carrying this year’s version, Senate Bill 26. It was sent to the Assembly on a 39-0 vote.

Prison authorities annually seize thousands of contraband cellphones, and law enforcement officials have worried aloud that they are being used by inmates to plot criminal activities outside the walls. Visitors and prison employees are generally viewed as major sources of the illicit devices, and authorities say the going price for a phone approaches $1,000.

Last year, Schwarzenegger vetoed Padilla’s SB 525, saying, “while signing this measure might be better than nothing, I cannot sign a measure that does so little.”

Source

The post CA Senate Passes New Cellphone Smuggling Bill appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This article discusses the contraband prison cell phone legislation working its way through the California legislature. It states that a smuggled prison cell phone sells for $1000. Offering inmates a secure prison cell phone service would eliminate the value of the contraband cell phone in prisons.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that California State Senator Alex Padilla pushed a bill to punish cellphone smugglers through its first stage of approval yesterday (his third attempt in the last four years).

Currently, phones are used by jailed bigshots like Charles Manson, the Nuestra Familia gang and many an everyday drug/human trafficker to make sure business doesn’t skip a beat while they serve their time. Thanks to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who — by some backward logic — wouldn’t pass the bill until it was harsher, neither the smuggling or the possession is punishable by law. See: “10,000 Cell Phones Smuggled Into California Prisons in 2010.”

But there’s an even more powerful force to blame, swaying legislative morality since 1957:

The California prison-guard union, or CCPOA, who demands that guards be paid for the time it would take to scan them for phones — costing the state millions of dollars it simply doesn’t have. At the beginning of February, after an in-depth analysis of the smuggling problem, the Senate Public Safety Committee found that prison guards were among those most at fault:

“All indications are that the primary source of cellphones being smuggled into prisons is prison staff. The committee has been presented no evidence of visitors who are properly screened through metal detectors being responsible for the problem.”

Committee Chairwoman Loni Hancock even had the spine to say it out loud yesterday: “These cellphones are being brought in primarily, it appears, by prison people employed by our corrections system. To me this is not only a very egregious public offense, but a breach of public trust.”

The real question is, why can’t California politicians bypass one measly union? Padilla originally wanted prison guards to be scanned on the way into work for any illegitimate phonage on their person.

But there was no getting past the state’s No. 1 political lobbyist and campaign piggybank: the CCPOA. Governor Schwarzenegger received gobs of campaign funding from the group, and Governor Jerry Brown after him.

Thanks to their influential protector, in the heat of California’s financial crisis, prison guards are paid for “walk time” — the time it takes to get from their car to the front door.

Here’s yesterday’s watered-down version of Padilla’s bill, as passed through the Public Safety Committee yesterday. And not a moment too soon: During the first two months of 2011, over 2,000 phones were confiscated in state prisons. (Next, the bill goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sigh.)

Smuggling: Any person, employee or nonemployee who possesses a cell phone with the intent to deliver, or delivers, to an inmate is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by six months in jail and a fine of up to $5,000 per device.

Inmate Possession: An inmate in possession of a cell phone shall be subject to loss of time credits. Time credit lost will not be eligible for restoration.

Visitor Protection: The bill contains language for visitors who inadvertently bring a cell phone into a prison without intent to deliver to an inmate.

Next question: How would the crime be enforced?

CCPOA spokesman JeVaughn Baker says the union is behind the bill in its current form. (And they kind of have to be. How would it look if they weren’t?) But in practice, why would prison guards and other prison staff turn in one of their own for partaking in a hugely profitable side-business? A recent State Inspector General report found that phones can go for as much as $1,000 each in the slammer. One corrections officer made $150,000 in a year — pretty much doubling his salary.

Source

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