The UK Justice Secretary recently announced that more prisoners will get in-cell phones to help maintain the family ties which can cut re-offending by 40%. The Justice Secretary unveiled plans for a further £10 million roll-out of in-cell landline telephones to help prisoners preserve relationships with their own loved ones and reduce tension on prison wings.

In justifying the investment, the announcement highlighted the three main benefits of enhanced communication:

• Family ties are a vital part of rehabilitation, an important link over the festive period, and ultimately help to cut the number of future victims of crime
• Restricted in-cell phones will also reduce both tension on the wings and demand for the illicit mobiles which fuel violence
• The roll-out is part of wider efforts to bring stability to prisons and boost inmates’ prospects of rehabilitation

Similar to the traditional bank of prison wall phones, all calls on in-cell phones are recorded and can only be made to a small number of pre-approved numbers. In the event that they are suspected of being used for criminal activity, calls can be monitored, and prison administrators can remove the phones of those who have misused them.

In a subsequent interview, the Justice Secretary stated that the in-cell phones would not be able to receive phone calls, unlike an illegal mobile phone.

“At the moment they can only make calls out, and that is not true with mobiles. Families come under huge pressure to phone into mobiles that are held illegally in prison and that can be very difficult for them,” he added. What is different is that if someone is in absolute crisis in the middle of the night, they can actually phone someone they love rather than asking a prison officer who is patrolling the entire wing.”

He also stated, “In-cell telephones provide a crucial means of allowing prisoners to build and maintain family relationships, something we know is fundamental to their rehabilitation. Introducing them to more prisons is a recognition of the contribution I believe in-cell telephones make to turning prisons into places of decency where offenders have a real chance to transform their lives.”

Response to the plan has been varied. An ex-prisoner interviewed made the following points:

• A great initiative and a step in the right direction, it may ultimately fail to achieve the government’s ambitious goals.
• The prison phone is too expensive and instead prisoners should be able to receive incoming calls via the prison pin system.
• The importance of family ties in prison is massive and supporting a loved one in prison can be the difference between life and death. I think it would reduce self-harm and suicide.
• He questioned why the roll-out is costing £10 million, one third of the additional £30 million allocated to prisons in the last budget, particularly given the phone lines are already in place.
• Most illicit mobiles in prison are in fact used only for keeping in touch with loved ones rather than criminal behavior.

Our view is that the philosophy and intent of this initiative is correct, but the implementation is deeply flawed. The reasons for this are twofold:

• The £10 million cost is a wasted capital cost that could be used for other investments (not to mention the ongoing operating costs to maintain, repair and replace). Why incur the handset and wiring expense when secure prison cell phone solutions such as meshDETECT cost nothing to the prison to deploy and maintain?
• Handsets on walls do nothing to improve the digital literacy and technological competency of inmates. In a recent interview the MoJ digital chief stated, “Prisons have been bypassed by the digital revolution. I think the opportunities of digital in that space are huge, and I’d like to leave a legacy of work that will take years to deliver, where we move much more towards a [situation] where, when you’re in prison, you can do useful things in your cell.”

What “useful things” can an inmate learn, accomplish, or gain in terms of digital literacy and technological competency by using a payphone handset connected to the wall of his cell?

The post Phones In Cells vs. Cellphones In Cells appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

Update (4/14): The DOJ just announced that it will require Federal Bureau of Prison halfway houses to boost services for inmates prior to release. The new rules also instruct federal work release facilities to provide cell phone access in order to help inmates seek employment opportunities.

This blog post written by Seth Ferranti, a Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate, provides an inside view of the problem of contraband cell phones in federal prison. As we have written, the problem of cell phones smuggled into prisons is dealt with entirely through a supply-side strategy meant to stop the flow of contraband wireless devices into the prison and increase the penalties for being caught with a smuggled phone.

The impact of this strategy, when effective, is to raise the value of the contraband in prison. As the article states, “All this succeeded in doing was making the prices for cell phones in prison skyrocket. Prisoners were still getting them in and using them. If you had the money you could buy one. Instead of just one prisoner having a phone, prisoners started grouping together, so that five prisoners might buy, keep and use one phone. It was more economical that way, with cell phones now going for upwards of $1500.”

As the blog post states, the airtime on cellphones has also become a new form of prison currency.

Providing prisoners, especially minimum security detainees, with a controlled and secure prison cell phone such as the meshDETECT solution will siphon off the predominant use of the contraband phones for communication with loved ones. Combined with the supply-side strategy, this demand-side approach will lower the value of the contraband wireless phones, eliminate airtime as prison currency and reduce recidivism.

Cell phones are more common in prison than you would think. All across the country in our nation’s prisons, prisoners are using cell phones to run their criminal enterprises, conduct business and stay in contact with their families. The smuggling of cell phones into prisons as contraband items has become a big and profitable business for guards and correctional officers who are quick to take advantage and make a dollar. The federal government is taking notice by enacting new and stiffer penalties for both guards and prisoners alike when they get caught with cell phones in prison. To the security conscious prison administrators, cell phones in prison are an epidemic that they are desperately trying to curtail. But with the large amounts of money changing hands for the contraband items the temptation will always be there for both guards and prisoners.

I have been in prison in the federal system for 19 years. Personally I have never had a cell phone or attempted to get one but being in the prison environment I have seen, heard and witnessed what has happened with cell phones over the years and I can relate my experiences to you. For informational purposes only of course. I first experienced the cell phone epidemic in 1999 when I transferred to FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey, a low security prison. Right when I got there, a dude I will call Jeff, approached and asked me if I needed to make a call. He went on to explain that the first call was free, but any call I made after that was three books of stamps, or about $15 at the time. I politely declined, because I did not know the dude and it was my first time in a low security prison. I had heard all types of stories of dudes going down to the lows and getting busted and set up for this type of thing, so I avoided Jeff.

But after I had been on the compound for a while I found out Jeff was a stand up guy and cell phones were his hustle. He had been at the camp at Fort Dix before and had an elaborate scheme where one of his homeboys would toss the phones over the fence of the low at a prearranged spot and Jeff would pick them up and sell them for about $200 to 300 on the compound and charge dudes $15 for unmonitored and unlimited calls. It was his hustle and his hustle was good. At the time the consequences of getting caught with a cell phone were not that serious. It was only considered a 300 series or minor shot, but that would soon change.

I got sent back up to a medium-high security institution shortly after that for writing an article in Don Diva Magazine that called for the United States to stage the drug war crime trials, where prosecutors and federal judges would be put on trial for crimes committed against the citizens of the United States, and in the medium-highs the cell phones were less prevalent, but still there. They were going for about $500. I was at FCI Fairton and a lot of the Mafia guys had cell phones. I had a lot of friends in camps and they were calling my wife on their cell phones regularly and talking to her and telling her to tell me hello. I even had some of their numbers on my prison monitored phone list. I would call them at the camp and see what was up. They would tell me I needed to get to a camp pronto. That was life in the feds. With the consequences for cell phones being minor, everyone, especially those at a camp (a minimum security prison) had one. That didn’t last long though.

With the epidemic reaching epic proportions the Bureau of Prisons acted decisively and changed the shot for cell phones from the light 300 series to a much more serious 100 series, which was the highest severity. They started writing prisoners, who got caught with cell phones 100 series shot and throwing them in the hole and transferring them. This was a big change, because for the 300 series shot, prisoners would lose their commissary for 30 to 60 days, but for the 100 series shots, they would get thrown in the whole for 60 days, lose 41 days good time plus phone, commissary and visiting privileges for six months. On top of that they would lose their camp status and be transferred to a higher security and much more restrictive prison.

All this succeeded in doing was making the prices for cell phones in prison skyrocket. Prisoners were still getting them in and using them. If you had the money you could buy one. Instead of just one prisoner having a phone, prisoners started grouping together, so that five prisoners might buy, keep and use one phone. It was more economical that way, with cell phones now going for upwards of $1500. Plus the Bureau of Prisons got crafty and started removing the Sims cards and all the info off them from the cell phones when they found them and ran the info against numbers on a prisoner’s monitored phone account, so that they could write them shots and throw them in the hole off the circumstantial evidence. So now, you don’t even have to be busted with the cell phone, if the number of your people is on there and they can match it up to your prison phone account or visiting list numbers they will write you a 100 series shot and throw you in the hole. But all this hasn’t stopped anything.

In 2006, I transferred to FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania and they had several guards bringing in cell phones, text messagers and even Smart Phones. Prisoners were going on the Internet, posting on Myspace and Facebook, texting their friends and families, even snapping photos and posting them on the social networking sites, all from prison. The phones were going for $500 to 800 and a lot of dudes had them. The SIS staff, who were in charge of prison investigations, were going nuts trying to find out who had the phones. They knew some of the Mafia guys had phones and went on a rampage, shaking down and ripping apart the lockers and rooms of anyone with an Italian surname.

There was one crazy guy from Boston, who used to send photos of his penis, a la Brett Favre, to girls he would meet on Myspace and Facebook. The girls would send back images of their private parts, which the dude would show to all his friends. The girls had no idea this guy was in prison. He never got busted or caught with the phone but other dudes did. It became a regular occurrence to get caught with a phone.

Nowadays the feds are giving prisoners caught with phones outside cases. I was just in the hole last spring here at FCC Forrest City in Arkansas with a dude who got busted with two cell phones. He got an outside case and got three more months on top of his sentence. He told me that even for two cell phones he could have only got six more months, but he was in the hole for almost nine months going to court for the case and was eventually transferred to a higher level prison and he got his phone privileges taken for five years. But he said it was worth it because when he was on the compound he had a sweet hookup similar to the one I described above with Jeff and he told me he was making a killing selling the cell phones and had his money stacked. But the feds and BOP aren’t playing when it comes to these phones, still they can’t do anything to stop them.

A certain rapper dude, whose name I won’t disclose, but was in prison with me, allegedly had a cell phone the whole time he was in prison. He was conducting his business, making plans and finalizing the deal on his new reality TV show. When his phones were found in searches and shakedowns, he would just place an order for another one and he would have it within two or three days, paying up to $1500 for it. One time they found two iPhones in his stash spot, but he didn’t sweat it. He had another one by the end of the week. But this is just hearsay and word on the pound, so who knows if it’s true.

The administration here seems to think that cell phones are coming in through the visiting room and they have changed up the whole visiting room policies because of this. My whole bid I have been able to hold my wife’s hand during visits, now due to the administration here saying that cell phones are coming in through the visits I can’t hold hands with my wife in the visiting room anymore. I can only hug and kiss her when she enters and leaves; the rest of the visit is no contact. They have even gone so far as to say that kids can’t sit on their father’s laps during visits. They are saying that there is no touching allowed at all.

It’s crazy times in the feds. I am glad that I will be out in the next couple of years, because it is only getting worse in here. The prison establishment knows their guards are bringing in the contraband but they blame us and make our families and loved ones suffer. Recently someone offered to sell me a cell phone for $1500, but I declined. I don’t need the trouble.

Source

The post Cell Phones in Federal Prison appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

As this article shows, the effort to keep contraband, such as cell phones, out of prisons and jails is extensive.The irony is that there is little effort to address the demand side of the equation. As the article states, “visitation and phone privileges are the two things inmates fear losing more than anything else. They’re also the privileges corrections officers are most reluctant to take away, leery of eliminating what may be a prisoner’s main incentive to behave himself.” Prisons can offer a secure cell phone solution to reduce the demand for contraband cell phones and at the same time add another privilege that can be used to control behavior.

The visiting room at the Maryland Correctional Training Center bustles with activity.

Inmates and the people who’ve come to visit them sit separated by a high brick wall, catching up on the latest news from home or perhaps just enjoying seeing each other again.

Inmates are allowed two visits per week, as long as they behave, said Capt. Steven Myers as he stands along the side wall of the room.

Visitation and phone privileges are the two things inmates fear losing more than anything else, Myers said. They’re also the privileges corrections officers are most reluctant to take away, leery of eliminating what may be a prisoner’s main incentive to behave himself.

But the visits can also pose another problem for the prison’s staff.

The wall, built by inmates in the prison’s masonry program, keeps prisoners from switching shoes with a family member under a table, or the many other methods of sneaking contraband into the prison, Myers said.

Contraband consists of anything a prisoner isn’t allowed to have, with some of the most common items being cellular phones, tobacco products and drugs, said Erin Julius, a spokeswoman for the Division of Correction.

Prisoners enter from one side of the visiting room and wind their way around the brick wall to the chairs on their side. Visitors enter from the other side of the room and take a seat across from them.

The high wall between prisoners and visitors, built by inmates in the prison’s masonry program, cuts down on the flow of contraband, Myers said.

Touching is mostly forbidden during visits, with the exception of one quick embrace per person per visit.

The wall between them is so high that just their heads visible over it. Any hands reaching across to exchange items would likely stand out to the handful of corrections officers who carefully scan the room.

To make doubly sure, inmates are led into a small room after their visit and strip-searched for any illicit materials.

In another part of the prison, a specially designed chair can scan prisoners’ body cavities to check for contraband.

X-ray machines scan inmates’ belongings, and facilities have specially trained dogs that can sniff out cellular phones, Julius said.

Cell phones are a particular source of consternation for corrections officials.

According to a report from the state’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Maryland prisons confiscated 1,128 cell phones in fiscal 2010.

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s office recently announced that the state had received a $350,000 federal grant to reduce the number of cell phones in Baltimore prisons.

The funds are targeted to increase staffing to crack down on gang members and other criminals who use cell phones to continue their criminal activity inside jails, and to ferret out prison staffers who help inmates get phones.

“Too many inmates are using contraband cell phones to harass witnesses and victims and orchestrate crimes behind prison walls, defying prison rules and law enforcement,” said U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., in a press release.

Source

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