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.”

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This editorial discusses the three cell phone bills working their way through the California legislature. Certainly making it a misdemeanor to smuggle a cell phone and permitting random monthly searches of prison employees for contraband will help prevent some the contraband wireless phones from making it into prison, but it certainly won’t stop all cell phones in jail.

The question then becomes what strategy is deployed to address the rest of the problem? Expensive and complex cell phone jammers and wireless managed access systems? Perhaps a different approach, one that tackles demand, rather than supply, might be worth investigating?

Amid the last-minute flurry of bills moving through the Legislature to the governor’s desk, three simple measures dealing with cellphones deserve to become law.

Two of them tackle the problem of the phones getting into the hands of state prisoners, some of whom use them to direct criminal enterprises from behind bars.

And the third deals with protecting the content of cellphones from warrantless searches by police.

In December, it came out that mass murderer Charles Manson was sending texts to people outside prison from a cellphone he had hidden under his mattress. And that came after the 2009 revelation that he was using a cellphone to call cronies in six states.

Last month, Facebook agreed to take down pages belonging to prisoners who have been updating their pages since going to prison – through their smartphones, of course.

More than 10,000 cellphones were confiscated from prisoners in 2010, compared to 261 in 2006. In some if not many of those cases, those phones have been smuggled in to prisoners by guards.

Senate Bill 26, by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Van Nuys, would make it a misdemeanor to smuggle a cellphone into a state prison, with penalties of up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

S.B. 139 by Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-San Jose, would permit random monthly searches of prison employees for contraband.

Both those bills passed the state Senate in June – by identical 39-0 votes – and should be expected to pass the Assembly and go to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk this week.

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed essentially the same bill by Padilla, saying he did so because the penalties were not strong enough; he wanted violation to constitute a felony. Brown should sign this time – some penalty is a better disincentive than none at all.

The third bill already has been sent to Brown. S.B. 914 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would overturn a California Supreme Court decision handed down in January. That ruling, in People v. Gregory Diaz, allows police, when making an arrest, to seize a suspect’s cell phone and conduct a search of messages, phone calls and data sent and received.

S.B. 914 would require police to get a warrant before searching a cell phone or other such communication device. It was approved by a 70-0 vote in the Assembly last month.

California Newspaper Publishers Association sponsored the bill because, under the Diaz decision, police could – without a warrant – search the phone of a reporter arrested while covering a riot, say, looking for unpublished information and confidential sources, which would be a way around the California Shield Law.

As attorney general, Brown supported the Supreme Court decision allowing warrantless searches.

As governor, he should sign S.B. 914, upholding the principle that police must obtain a warrant before searching a citizen’s private communications.

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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.”

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