This article by David Yannetti, describes not only the criminal uses of contraband prison cell phones, but also the potentially positive effects on maintaining family ties via a managed and secure prison cell phone solution:

Recent news reports highlight the challenge prison officials face in dealing with the proliferation of cell phone usage in prison across the nation.

Cell phones are nominally prohibited for prisoners in all state and federal prisons, but they turn up by the thousands, and the problem has been made even more difficult with the advent of Smartphones.

With a Smartphone, prisoners may have full access to the Internet, allowing all forms of activity, from contacting friends and family and shopping to directing attacks on other prisoners and criminal activity outside the prison.

Strikes Organized with the Help of Facebook

In Georgia, the New York Times reported, prisoners organized a strike using cellphones and internet applications like Facebook. The protest was concerned with the lack of pay for their work, bad food and limited visitation policies.

Unlike other protests, the prisoners were able to post up-to-minute reports and follow their coverage in the news media.

Prison officials have struggled to come up with a workable solution to prevent this prisoner access to cellphones. Results have been mixed. In California, 11,000 phones were confiscated in 2010. South Carolina collects 2,000 a year.

Some are smuggled in, but many are literally thrown “over the wall.” They have been kicked in soccer and footballs, shot through “potato guns” and are often thrown in packs camouflaged with grass to make it difficult for guards to discover them laying inside the fence.

Search Everyone?

Can’t everyone be searched? Well, yes, but that costs money. California has estimated that searching all employees and contractors entering the prisons within the state system would cost $20 million. Even limited, random searches are calculated to cost $1.3 million annually.

Jam the Signal?

No, the federal Communication Act of 1934 prohibits jamming of radio frequencies.

The most promising technological solution could be the system introduced in Mississippi. Known as managed access, it allows the system to track every call and text. Cellphones that are not on the approved receive a message saying the device is illegal and are disabled.

California, with largest state prison system, will follow the lead of Mississippi and implement a system of managed access. In Mississippi, the system intercepted over 600,000 calls and texts during the six-month trial period.

But…

While the phones may used for criminal or dangerous behavior, there is an aspect of the issue that shouldn’t be ignored. Cellphones are used by prisoners to communicate with their family. The New York Times article notes that David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “Inmates are more likely to successfully re-enter society if they maintain relationships with friends and families.”

A prisoner named Mike is mentioned in the story as regularly speaking with his son when the boy gets off the school bus and when he goes to bed at night. Prison often has a corrosive affect on family relationships, so developing a way to use cellphones to lessen this effect would be helpful. A managed network could be constructed to permit certain prisoners to have operational cell phones, say, as a reward for good behavior.

As the Justice Center of the Council on State Government reports, 77 percent of state prisoners will be released back to their communities.

While it is important to control cellphone usage to for the safety of prison personnel and other inmates, ignoring the needs of inmates who will be released can only lead to increased recidivism and a return of many to prison, carrying with it the all of associated costs to the states that they can ill afford.

The post In Prison, A Cellphone Really Is A “Cell” Phone appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This article touches on just about all the key issues and challenges facing prisons, detainees and families when talking about the contraband cell phone problem. Key quotes from the article:

And finally and most importantly, a legislative and operational approach limited only to restricting supply instead of also seeking to co-opt legitimate demand for lawful communication with family by supplying a secure cell phone solution such as meshDETECT. If meshDETECT was available, this inmate could have legitimately called his family to notify him of his parole.

Dwayne Kennedy threw a man from a moving car in 1988, but that’s not what’s keeping him in prison today. It’s not the inmate he stabbed 17 years ago either; the state parole board forgave him that.

Instead, California prison officials are keeping Kennedy locked up for an extra five years — costing taxpayers roughly $250,000 — because guards caught him with a contraband cellphone he says he borrowed to tell his family he had just been granted parole and was coming home.

It was “just stupid on my part for even using it,” Kennedy told a pair of parole commissioners convened in June 2010 to decide his punishment for breaking prison rules. But “cellphones are just everywhere in prison nowadays…. It’s easy to borrow one from a guy,” Kennedy said.

Indeed, Kennedy’s access to the phone underscores a rapidly growing problem for California corrections officials. Just five years ago, only 261 of the devices turned up behind state prison walls. This year, guards are on pace to seize about 15,000 phones — nearly one for every 11 inmates. Almost as troubling as prisoners gaining access to cellphones is their frequent source: prison employees.

Last month, a federal grand jury charged Bobby Joe Kirby, a Northern California prison guard, with wire fraud. Inmates paid him for phones via Western Union and other services, according to the indictment. When Kirby showed up to collect the cash at one location, he had to answer a security question he arranged with the inmates. “What’s your favorite color,” the clerk asked. “Green,” Kirby replied.

State investigators found that another guard made $150,000 in a single year delivering cellphones to inmates. He was fired.

Phones are so prevalent in California prisons that even highly scrutinized inmates can get their hands on them. Charles Manson has been caught with two. Inmates have used cellphones to run drug rings, intimidate witnesses and order violent attacks on the outside. Despite state leaders’ rising anxiety over inmates obtaining phones, smuggling them into prisons wasn’t against the law until this month.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill on Oct. 6 making it a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in a county jail. Brown also issued an executive order that requires prison officials to increase the number of random searches of employees and to determine how much it would cost to send them through airport-style screening on their way into work.

Under the new law, most inmates caught with phones face losing 90 days of credit earned for good behavior.

In Kennedy’s case, using the cellphone derailed his parole bid and effectively lengthened his prison stay by at least five years. That’s because a 2008 ballot measure extended the time inmates serving life sentences must wait for a new hearing when they are denied parole or their parole offer is revoked.

When the two parole commissioners met to decide his punishment for violating the cellphone rule, Kennedy said that he had made the calls because he was “overwhelmed and just happy” that he had been granted parole.

“He was so happy…. We were crying and praying,” recalled his sister, Yolanda Kennedy, one of the people he called.

But months later, parole commissioners John Peck and Dennis Smith found that Kennedy’s willingness to violate the prison rule proved he is an “unreasonable risk of danger to society.” They revoked his parole offer and imposed the five-year wait until his next hearing.

The commissioners’ decision seemed a bit severe to Debbie Mukamal, executive director of Stanford University’s Criminal Justice Center, who noted that the state is under a U.S. Supreme Court order to remove tens of thousands of inmates from its overcrowded prisons.

“I wonder if they’re punishing [cellphone use] more severely because it’s something they feel like they can’t control,” Mukamal said.

Heidi Rummel, a former federal prosecutor who now advocates for inmates’ rights as co-director of USC Law School’s Post-Conviction Justice Project, said there should be some evidence of harm before imposing such a harsh penalty.

“It would seem that why he had the cellphone would be a critical factor in deciding whether it made him a danger to society,” Rummel said.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court and the 2nd District Court of Appeal have rebuffed Kennedy’s efforts to get the decision overturned. His attorney, Keith Wattley, has filed a petition with the state Supreme Court. “There’s never been any allegation he’s done anything illegal with this phone,” Wattley said.

Kennedy, 44, has been in prison since 1990, serving 15 years to life for kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. He’s now at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blyth. He became eligible for parole in 1999 but a decade passed before parole commissioners found he was no longer a threat to society and recommended his release. They noted that Kennedy had stayed out of trouble for seven years and had a stable home and good job waiting for him on the outside.

The cellphone bust changed everything.

“Frankly, this panel didn’t buy that you were going to call your supporters to thank them,” said Peck, a parole board commissioner and recently retired prison guard who presided over the June 2010 hearing. “There is no way you would put your parole date at risk to make a thank-you call.”

Source

The post Borrowed Cellphone Slams Prison Cell Shut 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

The post Guards Work To Keep Contraband Out Of Jails appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This news video discusses the use of a cell phone-sniffing dog, appropriately named, “Sprint”, to find smuggled contraband cell phones in Oregon prisons. The video includes a demonstration of Sprint’s skills at the Santiam Correctional Institution in Salem.

Within seconds of the start of the demonstration, Sprint honed in on the scent of a cell phone hidden under an inmate’s pillow. According to the report, “High-end electronics such as cell phones have a unique odor. He’s not listening for sound, it’s not anything else. It’s all odor based.”

Interestingly, given the popularity and prevalence of contraband wireless phones, Sprint has yet to locate an inmate-smuggled phone. The meshDETECT secure cell phone solution uses uniquely identifiable cell phones so that they can be differentiated from contraband cell phones.

The post Detection Dog “Sniffs Out” Cell Phones Behind Bars appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

Today’s blog posting if from guest blogger Miranda Brown. In this essay, she discusses the shortcomings of the existing telephone service in the Texas prison system and the potential for improved rehabilitation of prisoners through the introduction of a secure and monitored cell phone solution.

Over ten years the look of the world can change significantly. Cell phones have gained significant popularity over the last decade. With all of the technological advances in our evolving society, it would be extremely difficult if someone had been removed from society for ten or more years. The cultural shock is something most newly released inmates experience. The shock serves the purpose of retribution, but is counter productive for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is necessary to keep Criminal Justice costs under control. It is not enough to expect success just because prison should have been harsh enough that they do not want to go back. It is necessary to do more to reduce the cultural shock upon release. Providing inmates with monitored cell phones will help prepare them to be successful upon their release and relieve some of the financial burden on taxpayers.

People generally have an angry and vengeful attitude towards the incarcerated population. Most inmates first went to prison as young adults, early twenties or late teens. They are our future neighbors, our friend’s unknown family members, military service men and women, brothers, sisters and parents. Of course there are bad people in prison, but that is not the majority of the population. The majority of the population is just like the rest of us; they just made a mistake and are paying for it. People go to prison as their punishment; they do not go to prison to receive additional punishment. Almost all of the people in prison will return to our neighborhoods one day. Who do we want living next to us? Do we want someone that was borderline tortured and treated like an animal for several years or someone that has been rehabilitated? It costs a great deal of tax money to house an inmate. If they are not reformed we will keep housing them for years to come. The most reliable indicator of an inmate’s success is not the torture or mistreatment they received in prison, but the support they have upon their release. It is easier to live in a harsh, familiar environment with people you know than to adjust to a society you are unfamiliar with and have no support in. The more communication and support from loved ones the more likely the inmate will succeed. The longer an inmate is incarcerated, the more likely support will be lost and success will not be found upon release. Offering continuous communication with loved ones will strengthen the bond that will lead to their success. It will help the inmate realize day to day the reason they must succeed as an inmate and then as a member of society.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) completed the installation of their first phone system in 2010. Most of the phones were installed in high traffic areas where it is difficult to carry on a conversation. It is not uncommon to find them in the dayroom under the television. It is difficult for most to have an uninterrupted conversation due to the location of the phones. A cell phone would allow more personal and frequent communication, while being monitored by TDCJ. The calls on the current system are funded by the people receiving the call and the model could be carried over to a cell phone program. A portion of the funds are designated for victim relief funds. There are cell phone companies for children that allow only certain numbers to be dialed. Phones can easily be restricted and restrictions are limitless. Carriers offer family allowance systems. The same idea could be followed for the inmate phones. Inmates are assigned custody levels that are dependent upon their behavior, length of sentence and time served. Only inmates of similar custody levels are to be housed in the same areas. This housing rule would make it easy to identify which inmates are permitted to have a TDCJ issued phone and which are not.

Currently there are numerous unmonitored illegal cell phones in the prison system. Last year there were almost a thousand phones confiscated in Texas prisons. That is only the confiscated phones and only is a very small fraction of what is really in the prisons. People are paying five hundred dollars or more per phone. Then they pay approximately fifty dollars a month for a prepaid plan. The state could be receiving that revenue and could alleviate the burden on taxpayers. TDCJ has reported they are prepared to invest five hundred thousand to 1.5 million dollars per unit for cell phone jammers and/or locators. There are over one hundred TDCJ units. The money will need to be added to an already strapped budget. We need to spend smarter. By investing in a monitored system the state will receive a return in the investment. People are paying for the inmates to have cell phones. If TDCJ charges a monthly access fee of fifteen dollars and has ten percent population participation that would be over two hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue. The inmate families would be responsible for the additional monthly air time fees. Carriers would be eagerly competing to obtain the contract. The inmates could have more continuous, personal contact with their families and more importantly their children.

Prisons that focus more on rehabilitation and support programs that encourage continued family support have found that inmates are more successful than those in an abusive environment. As a society we need to determine if our desire for retribution is great enough to continue funding massive incarceration at the cost of our education system or if we are prepared to invest in making the inmates more successful upon release. A monitored cell phone program in prisons is achievable and will have measurable positive results.

The post Prison Cell Phones and Rehabilitation appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

A major concern about contraband cell phones smuggled into jail is the lack of control over the calls made by prisoners. As this article shows, recorded prison phone calls are a key source of evidence in investigations. The meshDETECT secure cell phone solution provides the ability to record and monitor all calls made by prisoners.

Domestic violence is one of the most confusing crimes prosecutors have to deal with. The victim and suspect know each other. They may even love each other.

But prosecutors do have one powerful tool that gives them insight into, and sometimes ammunition for their cases: inmate phone calls from jail.

Suspects cooling their heels in jail have a lot of time to stew, and make phone calls. In Ramsey County, for example, the fact that these calls have been recorded for more than a decade is no secret. Every call is stamped with a warning that the call is being recorded, and is subject to monitoring at any time.

But Mike Seasly, domestic supervisor in the St. Paul City Attorney’s office, said an awful lot of suspects brought in on domestic violence charges aren’t intimidated by that message.

“So often they’ll call the people that they just hit, that they just battered, or they’ll call people that can get in touch with those victims of domestic abuse,” Seasly said. “And the purpose often times is to apologize for what they’ve done. Often times, it’s to try to get back into their good graces.”

Seasly has saved some examples from past cases he calls his “jailhouse greatest hits.” MPR News can’t disclose full names of the people involved because the tapes aren’t considered public.

A suspect who was arrested for allegedly hitting and slapping his girlfriend instructs her from jail, “Call up that prosecutor and tell him I ain’t f—— do s—, man. Tell them we weren’t even with each other or something. You were just mad because you thought I was with some other girl or something.”

On the phone, his girlfriend says she’s already talked to the prosecutor. Her boyfriend continues, “I know you told them you don’t want to press charges, but the state will so tell them I wasn’t doing nothing. You got to call and tell him that, baby!”

“Tell them that I just made everything up?” asks his girlfriend.

“Yes!” the suspect responds. “You gotta look stupid, otherwise, I’m going to go to jail for a year!”

Seasly points out that the phone call itself is a crime. It violated a no-contact order between the suspect and the victim, which can be charged separately, and it provided evidence for the ongoing case.

This defendant served 18 months in prison. Without the jail tapes, Seasly thinks the case might have been dismissed.

ORCHESTRATING FROM JAIL

Another suspect was determined to outsmart the system.

“He tries to do something a little different, which is to actually tell the victim that court is not even taking place,” Seasly said.

The suspect calls a female friend and instructs her to go down to the police station and use the lobby phone and pretend to be the receptionist. “Call her and tell her the court date has been moved to the 31st,” the suspect said. The girlfriend has been subpoenaed and agreed to testify at the real court date a week earlier.

The suspect adds another precaution. “And then, look, Sunday night, call T-mobile and cut the phone off,” the suspect tells his friend, ensuring that anyone from the outside world who tries to reach the woman and remind her of the real court date, won’t be able to reach her.

The friend promises to make the calls.

But the plot was foiled by the jail tapes, and and the defendant pleaded guilty to the charges.

AN EXTRA BURDEN ON THE POOR

Pat Kittridge, lead public defender for Ramsey County, has concerns about using jail tapes to escalate charges for domestic violence suspects.

Poorer defendants are less likely to post bail so they stay in jail, where calls are monitored.

Kittridge said not all calls are attempts to manipulate the victim. The content can be innocuous — talking about family matters, school and children — but the consequences for the defendant for breaking a no-contact order are severe.

“No-contact orders between parties are very glibly granted by the court, and very grudgingly removed,” Kittridge said. “People have real needs to discuss matters with one another and to do so constitutes a violation of the law and it creates a great difficulty.”

According to the St. Paul City Attorney’s office, defendants in domestic assault cases typically do contact their victims after an assault. But there’s such a huge volume of jail tapes and limited resources to listen to them, prosecutors probably catch only a tiny fraction.

Back in Seasly’s office, one of his prosecutors stops in, visibly irritated. His trial has “imploded.” After repeatedly assuring him she’d be there, the victim failed to show.

“Pull the jail tapes,” said Seasly. “Someone got to her.”

Source

The post Calls From Jail Shed Light On Intimate Crime appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This recent editorial on contraband cell phones from the LA Times advocates making the penalties for smuggling cell phones into prisons harsher. And perhaps tougher penalties for those guards and prison staff who are caught smuggling prison cell phones would act as deterrence for some. But with over 10,000 cell phones confiscated in California jails last year alone, it is unlikely a new law will significantly stem the tide of smuggled wireless phones into prisons. A new approach, one that reduces the contraband value of smuggled cell phones, is needed. By offering a secure cell phone service to prisoners, the legitimate use of these illegal phones, calls to friends and family, will be siphoned off. This will reduce the number of cell phones smuggled as well as the amount paid for them. The key to reducing supply is to reduce demand. The meshDETECT secure cell phone solution does exactly that.

It was bad enough when we learned in December that mass murderer and renowned psychopath Charles Manson was sending texts to folks outside prison walls using a flip phone that he kept hidden under his mattress. Now comes word that California inmates may be friending your kids on Facebook.

Officials at the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced this week that they’ve made an arrangement with the popular social-media site to take down pages belonging to inmates that have been updated since the owners went to prison. It seems that convicts are using contraband cellphones with Web browsers to harass their victims or issue threats on Facebook. Prisoners who set up Facebook accounts before being convicted are allowed to keep them, but if they’re updated while the inmate is still doing time, the company has agreed to take action.

That’s nice. But what’s to stop inmates from jumping to Google+ or Twitter? The problem doesn’t lie with the myriad websites where prisoners can go to plot violent crimes, conduct drug deals, order gang actions, plan escapes or engage in other mischief; it’s within the prisons themselves. More than 10,000 contraband cellphones were confiscated in California prisons last year, up from 1,400 in 2007.

A case making its way through federal court in Sacramento shows at least one way these phones are finding their way to inmates. Prison guard Bobby Joe Kirby is accused of collecting thousands of dollars in wire transfers from prisoners and their associates in exchange for smuggling cellphones and tobacco products into a correctional center in Susanville. Kirby is facing wire fraud charges, but in other cases in which guards or prison employees have been caught smuggling phones, they’ve gotten off with a slap on the wrist.

Two bills aim to solve this problem. The first, from state Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), would make it a misdemeanor to smuggle a cellphone into a state prison, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. In one of the occasional logical breakdowns that characterized his tenure, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill last year because he thought it wasn’t tough enough — Schwarzenegger wanted the crime to be a felony. Maybe it should be, but it makes little sense to reject a measure that would at least make penalties stiffer than they are now; moreover, Democrats in the Legislature have wisely put a moratorium on drafting new felony laws until the state’s prison overcrowding crisis is solved. The other bill, from Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), would permit random monthly searches of prison employees for contraband. Both bills passed the Senate unanimously; the Assembly should follow suit, and Gov. Jerry Brown should sign them.

Source

The post Cut Off Cellphones In Prison Cells appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This is an article on contraband prison cell phones is an interesting analysis of the impact smuggled cell phones have had on the revenue from prison payphones. In a quote from the article, a prisoner states, “The prison system is mad because nobody uses the phones on the wall anymore.” In California, as in other states, there has been a big drop in the number of prison phone calls made as illegal cell phones have become more prevalent. Unlike prison cell phone jammers, the meshDETECT secure cell phone solution has no upfront capital costs and recovers the prison phone call commissions currently being lost via the smuggled cell phones.

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 Prisons Seek Ally In Crackdown On Cellphones appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

This article is about yet another prison guard caught smuggling a contraband cell phone into jail. Given the high price paid by inmates for an illegal cell phone, the corruption of prison guards has become all to commonplace. A reduction of the contraband value of smuggled cell phones through the deployment of the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution will change the economics of this problem and reduce prison cell phone smuggling without the high cost of wireless jammers.

A former San Joaquin County jailer arrested for allegedly smuggling a cell phone to an inmate pleaded guilty Thursday to unlawfully accessing a computer database, according to court documents.

The guilty plea of Michael George McCann, 41, almost guarantees his career in law enforcement is over, said San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Donald Vaughn.

“I don’t know of any law enforcement agency anywhere that would hire a convicted felon,” Vaughn said in a telephone interview Thursday afternoon.

McCann was arrested on Jan. 6 after an investigation uncovered he had allegedly smuggled a cell phone into the jail. The prosecution had photographic evidence of McCann meeting an inmate’s significant other at a convenience store and receiving money, Vaughn said.

While he faced multiple charges in connection to the smuggling and unlawful access, the bulk of the charges were thrown out in the interest of justice, according to court documents.

Although he may not serve any time behind bars as part of his plea, Vaughn said he was pleased with the outcome because it shows the public wrongdoing will not be tolerated.

“He’s leaving here as a convicted felon on probation,” he said.

Vaughn would not speculate what McCann’s motive was for accessing the database.

The situation is an unfortunate one because it taints the image of the county and its justice system, the prosecutor said.

“It’s a sad case for all of law enforcement,” he said. “Citizens have to be able to trust law enforcement officers in order for them to do their job; people like McCann really hurt the community.”

McCann had been an employee of the San Joaquin Sheriff’s office since January of 2002, Sheriff’s spokesperson Les Garcia previously said. The department did not comment on McCann’s plea because he is no longer an employee.

Officials also declined comment on if procedures or protocols for correctional officers have changed since McCann’s arrest.

The former correction officer will be sentenced September 23. He could face between 0 days and 1 year in jail, Vaughn said. A probation report will be prepared prior to his sentencing to give the judge an objective look at what his punishment should be, Vaughn said.

“How much time he spends in jail, if any, will be up to the judge,” he said.

McCann’s lawyer, Gary Lacy, could not be reached for comment.

Source

The post Jailer Pleads Guilty in Cell Phone Smuggling Case appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.

The following editorial is a response to one written earlier regarding contraband prison cell phone signal jamming. In it the author, an official of the Maryland DOC states, “Corrections systems must invest, innovate, develop partnerships and educate themselves in order to gain the necessary capabilities to fight this problem.” This is very true, but all the approaches he mentions are related to smuggled cell phone interdiction and detection. None of the solutions contemplate proactively reducing the contraband value of smuggled cell phones by offering prisoners a secure cell phone solution in order to siphon off legitimate usage (prisoners who simply want to stay in touch with friends and family) and thereby reduce the contraband value of smuggled wireless phones. It is time for DOC officials to consider addressing the root cause of the problem (demand) in a addition to spending money on detection and interdiction.

Terry Bittner’s assertion that cell phones in Maryland’s prisons are an issue is correct. This is an issue in every state. His assertion that Maryland is focusing on a single solution — cell phone blocking — is inaccurate. And his insinuation that we are not doing enough is wrong (“Cell phone blocking isn’t the only answer for Md. Prisons,” June 15).

There is no one single solution to meeting the challenge of illegal cell phones in prisons. In the absence of jamming, which is generally illegal in the United States, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has conducted more than 20 months of research on all available technologies to better understand which cellular detection, managed access or jamming applications would work best in our prisons. This includes a multi-vendor pilot demonstration in the summer of 2009 and several subsequent long term single-vendor pilots.

But not waiting on a technological solution, we have attacked and significantly slowed the flow of cell phones on several fronts including: developing better intelligence, investing in better entrance and scanning technology, innovating approaches like using cell phone sniffingdogs, and data mining interdicted cell phones to help local prosecutors build better cases on inmates found with phones.

Better intelligence has made gang communication within our prisons increasingly more difficult and has become integral to gaining convictions for many Black Guerilla Family gang members in the past two years (alluded to by Mr. Bittner). Our $1.1 million entrance scanning technology has increased the percentage of cell phones captured before they make it inside our prisons by more than 10 percent through April of fiscal year 2011 compared to fiscal year 2010; our dogs have found almost 500 phones since 2008; and with our new forensics intelligence gathering abilities we are seeing close to a 90 percent conviction rate in the cell phone cases states’ attorneys are now taking to court.

None of this is guaranteed to stop all cell phones from getting into our prisons, but it has decreased the flow — by 32 percent in 2010 compared to 2009. But more importantly, these targeted efforts have helped make our prisons safer for staff and offenders. Serious assaults on staff have fallen by 50 percent from 2007 to 2010. On offenders they have fallen 35 percent.

Corrections systems must invest, innovate, develop partnerships and educate themselves in order to gain the necessary capabilities to fight this problem. Maryland has become a national leader in cell phone interdiction, and our efforts have been reported on by media here in Maryland and nationally.

Mr. Bittner’s comments misrepresent and cloud the exhaustive efforts we have made, not only to slow the flow of cell phones inside our prisons, but also to identify truly effective anti-cellular technologies and the best practices of their use.

Gary D. Maynard

The writer is secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Source

The post No Single Solution To Illegal Cell Phones In Prison appeared first on meshDETECT® Blog.