An interesting article about the challenges of newly booked prisoners using the prison pay phones in county jails. As stated in the article, the inablity to make collect calls to cell phones, “strikes people strange that, in this technologically advanced and cellphone-reliant age, there is no easy way to make a collect call to a cellphone, particularly as the number of people without a land line increases. According to a 2010 Centers for Disease Control report, 25 percent of U.S. households don’t even have a land line.”

At meshDETECT, we have developed a solution to this problem that provides new detainees a prepaid account and telephone access at the time of intake. Please contact us to find out more about this innovative solution.

Where was Stephen Petrick? That was the question among his friends in mid-November after the 67-year-old retiree suddenly disappeared.

At the time, no one knew that he had been trying to help a pregnant woman kick a nasty heroin habit by locking her inside his Santa Monica home so she couldn’t buy drugs, or that she had tried to flee and things turned ugly fast, ending with the cops arresting Petrick on a charge of false imprisonment.

Not one of Petrick’s friends had an inkling that Petrick was stuck inside the Los Angeles County jail system — for five long nights — unable to contact them or a bondsman because of the phone setup inmates are forced to use.

“You supposedly have the right to bail,” Petrick says, “but it was effectively denied by the way the phone system works. It should be criminal.”

Petrick says he was arrested in Santa Monica, where he was fingerprinted and booked at the city jail. When he asked to make a phone call, officers told him he had to wait until he was transferred to the L.A. County jail later that day.

At the county jail, Petrick says, he told the deputies that he had high blood pressure and diabetes, so he was placed in a medical unit. He describes it as a large room with 20 to 30 inmates, a few narrow, stainless-steel benches and two or three telephones.

Immediately, Petrick says, he walked up to one of the old-fashioned-looking pay phones, a big black box with patches of chrome but absent a coin slot. Petrick lifted the receiver and placed it to his ear, listening to the automated voice tell him he’d be making a collect call and that it may be recorded or monitored.

Petrick reached out to dial a number. He paused.

Like many people, Petrick had come to rely on his cellphone. He wasn’t as good as he used to be about memorizing phone numbers. Excitedly, he recalled one person’s cell number and dialed it.

His elation, however, quickly turned to anxious frustration as the automated voice told Petrick that he could not place a collect call to a cellular phone. He could only call out to a land line. Trouble was, he hadn’t memorized any land-line numbers.

Hell, he hardly even knew anyone with a land line anymore.

“I realized right away that I had a problem,” Petrick says.

Next, Petrick says, he looked around for a phone book or a posted list of bond agencies so he could arrange to pay bail. The bond was $150,000, an amount Petrick says he had no problem paying. But he needed to call someone on the outside to help.

Unfortunately, he says, he could not find a list of phone numbers for bail bondsmen. When he asked a deputy for help, Petrick says, the deputy was resolutely unhelpful, telling him, “That’s your problem. If we gave you the number, that would be showing partiality.”

After spending a few sleepless nights in the large room filled with other inmates, Petrick says, he was moved to a more permanent cell with access to a common room containing phones. Doubting they would be any different, Petrick tried once again to place a call. But the results were the same. No collect calls to cellphones. No phone list of bail bonds agencies.

Petrick says he was not able to arrange bail until after he had his first court appearance — four days after his arrest.

“There was no way in hell for me to call anyone or to get a bondsman’s number,” he says. “The phones in there effectively denied me the right to make bail, and I don’t know if many people know about this.”

Jeff Stanley, owner of Bad Boys Bail Bonds, one of the largest bond companies in California, with offices from San Jose to San Diego, says the phone situation at L.A. County jail is one of the worst in the state.

“The individuals in custody are held hostage to this phone system that they have to use to talk to an attorney or a bondsman — something they have the legal right to do,” Stanley says. “I truly believe that it’s a violation of their civil rights, because everyone has a right to bail, and this is interfering with that right.”

Says Esther Lim, the jails monitor for the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the few people actually allowed inside the notoriously restricted facility, “I didn’t see a listing of bail-bonds companies near any of the phones I’ve looked at. I have seen listings by the phones for your ambassador if you’re not a U.S. national, but nothing for bail bonds. It’s ridiculous.”

Nicole Nishida, spokeswoman for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, confirms there are no phone numbers provided for bail bondsmen near phones to which inmates have access.

“And we have no plans of doing it in the future,” she says.

Nishida calls the problem a “vending issue” that would have to be resolved by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. She says it boils down to fairness: making sure the Sheriff’s Department does not display favoritism toward any particular bail bonds businesses.

Officials in other counties, however, say they’re having no such problem and have found easy ways to provide phone numbers to everybody in jail.

An Orange County jail spokeswoman, for example, says that a list of bond companies, with phone numbers, is posted in both the booking area and in the common rooms used by inmates. She says the bond agencies must contact a company that contracts with the county, and they pay to get on the list that goes inside the jail.

In San Diego County, the Sheriff’s Department used to provide inmates with the Yellow Pages but recently replaced the bulky phone book with an alphabetical listing of bail bonds companies provided to the jail by a local association of bail agencies.

“L.A. County does not post a list,” says bondsman Stanley, “and I have no idea why. L.A. County marches to its own beat.”

In addition, it strikes people such as Stanley, Lim and Petrick as strange that, in this technologically advanced and cellphone-reliant age, there is no easy way to make a collect call to a cellphone, particularly as the number of people without a land line increases. According to a 2010 Centers for Disease Control report, 25 percent of U.S. households don’t even have a land line.

Stanley’s is one of them.

“Many families like myself don’t have a land line,” he says, “and I think it’s about time they moved into the 21st century.”

Dorothy Cukier of Global Tel Link, a company that specializes in prison phones and operates the system in L.A. County, told the Weekly via email that collect calls in general — whether they originate from a jail or not — are limited to land lines. The company is allowed to jump in when inmates call a cellphone, offering the recipient of the call a chance to sign up for a service, AdvancePay, which lets calls to cellphones go through, by using a credit card. Another option, Cukier says, is for inmates to put money into an inmate debit account, out of which they can pay to call a phone that does not ordinarily accept collect calls.

Petrick says he was never offered an inmate debit account and has no idea whether a Global Tel Link agent jumped in to ask the friend Petrick had called if he’d accept the charge. All Petrick knows is that he couldn’t get through to his friend.

Two months after Petrick finally arranged bail and got out of jail, he settled his criminal case, which prosecutors apparently agreed wasn’t as serious as the initial charges implied. He pled guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment. He received three years of probation and, ironically, credit for time served for his five nights missing in the jail system.

As for the future, Petrick says, “The first thing I’m going to do is carry a bail bondsman’s number with me at all times and memorize it in case there’s some fluke and I get in trouble again. I don’t want to ever get stuck in jail like that again. It was a nightmare.”

Source

The post Prison Pay Phone Problems In The County Lock Up appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

An interesting look at prison life in Massachusetts. The article states that there are only three inmate phones for over 800 prisoners. By providing a secure cell phone solution such as meshDETECT, the prison can significantly increase detainee access to their families while limiting the safety risks of the prisoner movement necessary to get the prisoners to the pay phones.

It’s where no one wants to go.

The shower floors are scarred from the blades of sharpened shanks. There are no televisions, radios, or hotpots allowed, and no access to the canteen. Pay phones on wheels are rolled to cells for brief calls, and some prisoners play chess by calling out their moves on separate boards in separate cells, where prisoners are required to spend 23 hours a day.

Pedro Tapia, 30, of Hyde Park, who was serving up to 15 years for armed robbery, was in the segregation unit – or hole – at MCI-Shirley medium-security prison for his third time after being accused of verbally assaulting a staff member.

“Everything is hard about being in here; you have to be mentally strong,” he said while in a cage-like outdoor space for his hour of fresh air. “I read so much that my eyes start to twitch to the point that tears come out.”

Unlike at minimum-security prisons, where inmates have much more freedom and are on a glide path to release, the vast majority of the state’s 11,500 prisoners live in a world bounded by monotony, violence, and strict routines, where barred doors and barbed wire etch the horizon and the purpose is punishment.

My visit to the hole was one stop on a three-day tour of the state’s prison system, including a period during which, with my permission, the state Department of Correction stripped me of my regular clothes and locked me in chains, to let me experience incarceration in a more personal, first-hand personal way. (Everyone interviewed knew I was a journalist.)

Over three days, I saw from an inmate’s perspective the stark difference between the bleak, highly controlled world of medium and maximum security — from which no one has escaped since 1990 — compared to the relative freedom of minimum-security prisons.

Our journey began at MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole, a former maximum-security prison surrounded by 20-foot-high walls, eight observation towers, and five strands of electrical wire that has become the gateway to prison life in Massachusetts. Most inmates stay in this sprawling 56-year-old facility, which smells like formaldehyde on hot days, for two to four months while awaiting a permanent assignment.

New inmates are strip searched – with every orifice checked – scanned for metal objects and other contraband, fingerprinted, and given starchy gray scrubs, ill-fitting canvas shoes without laces, and a paper bag with essentials, including a dull razor, seven pairs of underwear, and a special pen designed so it can’t be used as a weapon. Any possessions, including their street clothes, are either destroyed or mailed home.

Correction officers and other staff check newbies for gang symbols, conduct medical and psychological evaluations, and advise them that bad behavior could affect whether they are classified to a maximum-security prison or a lower-security facility.

Cedar Junction is far less tense since it became a reception center in 2009 and assaults against other prisoners and staff have dropped more than 50 percent. Still, many of the 800 prisoners — 300 more than it was designed for — are on edge, especially when it’s hot. The food is marginally edible and most live in cramped cells with another prisoner, sharing a toilet and standing for six inmate counts a day.

“The yard is despicable, they don’t allow you anything to cook with, and nobody can get on the phone, because there are only three,” said Keith Cousin, 24, of Dorchester, who was convicted of illegally possessing a gun in June.

As he sat in his cell on a sweltering summer day, he said he was adapting to life behind bars. “It’s a very, very depressing place to be,” he said. “But I understand this isn’t a hotel.”

My department guides told me to remove my street clothes – sparing me the strip search – and don the polyester gray scrubs and shoes, which felt like vices on my feet. Then, they locked my ankles and wrists in double locked cuffs, with my hands linked to a waist chain to limit mobility.

That’s how I dressed for my visit to a holding cell at Cedar Junction, a sallow, fluorescent-lighted space with concrete walls and steel bars, where they served a lunch of what they described as “seafood surprise,” with something that loosely resembled apple pudding in a Styrofoam cup. I could muster only a few nibbles.

Afterward, they escorted me to a waiting transport van, a jaunt that made me appreciate the pain of moving too quickly in ankle cuffs. They locked me in a backseat with little legroom, behind grated windows, with doors that don’t unlock from the inside, and drove us to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, the maximum-security prison in Shirley.

No one has ever escaped from Souza-Baranowski, the state’s newest prison, which is not surprising, given all the special fences, motion-detection sensors, nine guard towers, and 372 cameras recording 24 hours a day. Just to get inside, we had to go through two separate gates and the driver had to step out of the van to show guards he isn’t being held hostage.

It was there, waiting between the two gates, that the guards decided I should change back to street clothes. Even though everyone had been told that a reporter was in the vehicle, guards were still startled when I climbed out of the van to stretch.

Prisoners are not supposed to exit the vehicle, I learned.

Upon arrival, new inmates must go through another full strip search — inmates have been found hiding razors and paper clips beneath their tongue and cell phones and lighters in their rectum. They are allowed televisions, typewriters, fans, and portable radios, but they all have to be a specially designed see-through, tamper-resistant brand only available through the prison’s canteen.

For better-behaved prisoners, the next step may be a short trip down the hill to MCI-Shirley’s medium-security prison, which like Souza-Baranowski is surrounded by a double ring of tall fences and microwave detection devices.

At orientation, new prisoners learn the rules: Sneakers must be all white to avoid gang colors. Windows of cells can’t be covered. Pictures of families are allowed but naked women aren’t. They have to stand for count four times a day and obey directions from correction officers.

They also learn about the greater number of programs available in medium security: Some prisoners study to be line cooks and others to become barbers. They have more free time, too, to play board games, cards, and rap with other inmates.

In the chow hall, a tinderbox where sitting in the wrong place can be a provocation, there are separate tables where Latin Kings, Boston and Springfield gangs, Muslims, and sex offenders, among others, segregate themselves.

When I arrived with a photographer at the medium-security prison, our presence seemed to be known by every inmate within moments of our arrival. Inmates were eager to talk to us, and we interviewed whomever we chose – aging brothers serving a life sentence for a joint-venture murder, a repentant father of four convicted of dealing drugs, a couple during visiting hours who described how they maintained a relationship through his three decades in prison.

Our escorts refused to allow us to interview just one inmate, a prisoner who said he had been in the same dorm room as Tamik Kirkland, who had escaped from the nearby minimum-security prison a few months before and allegedly shot a man to death. They claimed it was for legal reasons.

Among the inmates we met in medium security was Joseph Labriola, 66, one of the few who succeeded in escaping from a Massachusetts prison. A decade after he was incarcerated for killing a drug dealer in 1973, he spent 93 days on the lam, before the FBI captured him living with a stripper in Nevada.

He impressed upon us the deprivation and danger of life behind bars, the monotony of the constant routine, and the sense that many inmates, despite their anger, appreciated why they were there and the need for their punishment.

But if he could, Labriola insisted, he would run again.

“I would rather be outside that fence and die in a snowstorm than die in this prison warm,” he said.

Author: David Abel
Source

The post An Inside Look At Prison Life appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This article discusses the “amenities” available to the detainees in a women’s minimum security prison in Indiana. In discussions about amenities available to prisoners, there is always a contrast between those who advocate what they believe to be reasonable privileges for the purpose of facilitating rehabilitation and those who advocate hard time and bare minimum facilities. The warden of this particular facility states, “We definitely want to put a better person back on the streets than we received…it’s a place that preaches reform as much as punishment.”

And perhaps the middle way is the best approach as it seeks to reduce recidivism while acknowledging the reality of the offense that led to incarceration. We believe that communication with family and loved ones while serving one’s time is not an amenity but an important part of the effort to reform. A strong connection with one’s family supports the rehabilitation process. The key is to offer prison telecommunications services in a manner that enhances safety, maintains security and rewards good behavior. We believe the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution does exactly that.

As a steady rain fell recently, the conditions outside the Madison Correctional Facility prison (MCI) were best described as gloomy. But inside the minimum security facility in Madison, Indiana, they were a bit more pleasant.

“It’s a good facility if you have to be locked up, but definitely there is nothing fun about being locked up,” said Superintendent Jan Davis.

Davis is described by most of the offenders as tough but fair.

“We definitely want to put a better person back on the streets than we received,” said Davis. And that is what a minimum security facility like Madison can do with just under 500 inmates, it’s a place that preaches reform as much as punishment.

“Every offender here has an assignment, whether it be a work assignment, or a program assignment they have to be at,” said Davis.

One such program is a fully-equipped cosmetology school.

“Then they go to the State Board and take a test, and then we also have some in here who are also doing a nail care program.,” said Davis.

Those are just a few of the classes inmates are offered during their time.

“Most of them (inmates), the average stay is about a year, our violence level is very, very low,” said Davis.

Most offenders are there due to non-violent, lower-level felonies. They include Cindy Melin from Fowler, Indiana. She is serving a forgery sentence until 2014. “It’s not as bad being here as it could be like in a maximum facility,” said Melin. That’s exactly what 9 News found at the facility too.

Inmates do have TV, but “they do not have any special channels, it is just basic cable,” said Davis. Inmates also have a library, pay phones, a softball field, parenting classes, a fitness center and a child friendly visitation center.

“I believe you should still have some freedom and rights in here, and be allowed to do those kind of things,” said Melin.

What they don’t have includes Internet access, conjugal visits, radios and air conditioning. “The small things we took for granted on the outs, is the biggest things we don’t take for granted in here,” said Sasheena Bonner.

The Anderson, Indiana woman is serving a burglary sentence until 2016.

“There are times when you feel down and you miss your family and all, but you have to take it a day at a time,” said Bonner.

As for sleeping conditions, Madison is all dormitory-style housing. “Some rooms will have two to a room, some have six, some are a little larger,” said Davis.

The most surprising creature comfort? Creatures. Dogs and cats living with the offenders. They are part of a successful apprenticeship program at MCI that turns strays into adoptable pets.

“We are not all bad people,” said Melin.

Source

The post Lockdown Luxuries? appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This article describes how Federal prison inmates can now use email. It’s a cumbersome process, but it demonstrates how modern communications technology and tools are slowly being adapted for the unique requirements of the corrections marketplace. Eventually, the meshDETECT secure cell phone service will offer secure, controlled email along with phone calls.

The Facebook page reads: “We are inmates in the federal system who are looking for someone to talk to. We have e-mail capability so we may chat.”

A few caveats: “You must be educated and (non-ghetto) please.” Oh, and only women need reply.

Welcome to 21st century prison life, a world where those on the inside can communicate with those on the outside via cyberspace.

As of this month, all 116 federal prisons in the U.S. provide email access to qualifying inmates who pay 5 cents per minute to use the computer.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons reads all the emails, and recipients have to agree to be contacted.

Internet access, though, remains off-limits.

Some states are following suit. Michigan uses a program called JPay, which lets outsiders email inmates. But prisoners cannot reply electronically.

“We still have to ensure facility security,” said John Cordell, a Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman, pointing out that full-scale email “is not viable for us.”

Maybe in the future, he said. But for now, snail mail, pay phones and personal visits will have to do.

Prisoners have been trying to find ways to communicate with the outside world for years, even secreting smartphones into footballs tossed over security fences.

But now, federal prisons have another high-tech – and sanctioned – option to stay in touch.

This spring, the Federal Bureau of Prisons officially made email available in all 116 of its prisons, with nearly 122,300 inmates – more than half the federal prison population – already qualifying for the program. The idea is to help inmates keep ties with the community and family members by letting them talk online.

Of course, inmates trying to communicate with the outside world isn’t new. Cellphones and smartphones are getting smuggled inside by the thousands.

But prison officials say e-mail offers a link that can be easily monitored. The messages going in and out are screened. The recipients are pre-approved, and only those who agree to be emailed can get messages.

“The Bureau of Prisons has taken a lot of pains to make sure that any security concerns are taken care of. If the public is scared that some inmate is going to be stalking in cyberspace, that is not going to happen,” said Elizabeth Kelley, co-chairwoman of the Corrections Committee for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Based on recent Internet activity, inmates are doing plenty of cybertalking.

Strict policy

In state and federal prisons nationwide, cellphones and smartphones are regularly smuggled in – in some cases getting tossed over fences – leaving the corrections community scrambling to stay on top of the problem.

Inmates are texting, tweeting and posting on Facebook, thumbing their noses at rules banning Internet use.

MDOC spokesman John Cordell said Michigan hasn’t yet decided to jump on the prison email bandwagon. In addition to the federal prison system, a handful of states are allowing inmates to e-mail family, friends and their lawyers.

“Michigan has a pretty strict Internet-based policy. There are no network connections inside the prison setting that a prisoner could utilize,” said Cordell, noting any kind of Internet use could jeopardize inmate and public security, even tightly monitored email.

Several benefits

Instead, Michigan inmates communicate using the pay phone, written letters or actual visits at the prison, he said.

There’s also JPay, a system that allows outsiders to send an email to the prison; a printed copy is delivered to the inmate. But the prisoner can’t respond via email.

“It’s one of the things that ultimately we may consider,” Cordell said of full-scale e-mail. “But right now, it’s not something that’s viable for us.”

That’s too bad, say prisoner advocates and criminal defense lawyers.

They say prison email has several benefits: it’s easier to monitor and read than regular mail, it’s cheaper than pay phones for inmates, and it helps prepare inmates for re-entry by keeping them in touch with the outside world.

“That’s a lot more reasonable than them using the phones,” said criminal defense attorney Anthony Chambers, who has several clients in federal prison and views prison e-mail as “extremely helpful.”

Source

The post Federal Inmates Eligible To Use Email appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

The “legitimate” use of prison cell phones by prisoners to stay in contact with friends and family is highlighted in this article. Amazingly over 10,000 contraband prison cell phones were confiscated in California prisons in 2010. That is lost revenue the state could have earned by deploying the meshDETECT Secure Prison Cell Phone Solution.

Update (4/19/12) This bid has been awarded to GTL

Frustrated by the state’s inability to prevent thousands of illicit cellphone calls made by inmates from its prisons, California’s corrections chief is seeking help from an industry that has a big financial interest in his cause.

Prisons Secretary Matthew Cate said he will offer a deal to companies that bid for the next contract to provide phone service for state inmates: Install costly equipment that will block cellphone calls and see profits surge as prisoners use authorized services to connect with the outside world.

“If cellphones are inoperable, the company will make more money,” Cate said in a recent interview.

Prisoners are supposed to use pay phones mounted on the walls of their housing units to call people outside. They are charged collect call rates, and the conversations are recorded and monitored by prison staff. But the proliferation of smuggled cellphones in recent years has reduced use of the authorized phones and the ability to monitor them, and officials say they cannot afford the technology to block cellular signals.

The contract for inmate phone service is up for renewal. Cate wants the winning bidder to pay the estimated $16.5 million to $33 million that it would cost to install “managed access” systems in all 33 state prisons.

In one day earlier this year, a test of the system intercepted more than 4,000 attempts to place calls, send text messages and access the Internet from smuggled cellphones at a single prison, said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Paul Verke. He would not reveal which prison, citing security concerns.

Use of authorized phones went up by 64% in the days after the test, Verke said.

Dorothy Cukier, an attorney for Global Tel Link, the Alabama company that supplies pay phones and collect call service to California’s prisons, said that “contraband cellphones certainly have had an impact” on the number of calls placed from her company’s phones. The firm “welcomes the opportunity to discuss” Cate’s proposal, she said.

Prisoners’ rights advocates and civil libertarians say Cate’s plan would lead to financial exploitation of inmates and their families, many of whom struggle to pay for daily necessities. A typical 15-minute call from an inmate costs about $2.

“When the prison system gives the phone company a monopoly, they jack up the price,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national prison project. “What we want to do is encourage more contact. That’s a prime predictor of [inmates’] success in the future.”

Bobby Taylor, who was recently released from Avenal State Prison in Central California, where he served part of a 19-month sentence for drunk driving, said he had a Samsung phone for most of his time there. He stayed out of trouble checking Facebook, following his favorite fishing websites and staying in touch with his 13-year-old daughter, he said.

“The prison system is mad because nobody uses the phones on the wall anymore,” Taylor said.

The state’s take from the pay phone concession was $26 million in 2008, when legislation was passed to bring down the cost of inmates’ calls. The government’s share has been reduced by $6.5 million per year since, prison officials said, and will be reduced further, to $800,000, this year.

Prison officials have been warning legislators that the explosion of smuggled cellphones — guards confiscated 261 devices in 2006 and more than 10,000 in 2010 — poses a public safety threat. Inmates use them to run criminal enterprises from behind bars and arrange assaults on enemies inside. Even the most closely watched inmates have been caught with them. Notorious killer Charles Manson has been caught with two.

Legislators complain that prison employees are the most likely sources of smuggled phones because, unlike visitors who must go through metal detectors, employees are not searched on their way into work.

Taylor said he rarely saw anyone using the wall-mounted pay phones during his sentence at Avenal.

“I think the only time people would use the wall phones,” he said, “was to call their people” on the outside “and get another cellphone.”

Source

The post CA Prisons Seek Jammers in Cellphones Crackdown appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.