Contraband cell phones smuggled into prison is a problem in jails around the world. And it will continue to be until the supply-side strategy of confiscating smuggled mobile phones is paired with a demand-side strategy of co-opting the desire for more frequent and private conversation with family and loved ones by providing a secure prison cell phone service.

At least two mobile phones or SIM cards for every day are found in Liverpool’s prisons.

The number of confiscations shows how prison officers are battling to prevent mobiles, which may be used to assist criminal enterprise beyond cell walls, being brought in.

Despite annual pleas for a crackdown many of the devices are still simply thrown over the walls and into the exercise yards.

At HMP Altcourse in Fazakerley, which houses up to 1,204 inmates, at least 637 phones, SIM cards or handsets were confiscated between November 1 2010 and October 31 2011, a freedom of information request showed.

In HMP Liverpool for the same period at least 140 were confiscated.

The findings will be particularly embarrassing for the privately managed Altcourse prison, whose mobile phone problem has attracted criticism from the prisons Independent Monitoring Board.

Its annual report for 2011 stated that its advice on mobile phones has been “studiously ignored” for years.

The Board identified mobile devices as an “ever growing and even harder to find threat to safer custody.”

In 2009, a report by the Board advised that a signal deviator, a device that would effectively block mobile phone transmissions, was an “urgent requirement” for Altcourse, but the equipment is yet to be installed.

The scathing report on the prison, which is financed and managed by G4S, said: “Whilst the deviating technology has advanced leaps and bounds the responses to our concerns remain in the stagnant era.”

It added that the key supply route for the mobiles was also used for illegal drugs, the supply and use of which “remains a serious problem”.

It said that both phones and drugs are usually “thrown over the prison wall and into the prisoner exercise yards”.

A spokesperson for G4S said: “‘We work extremely hard to prevent phones from being used by prisoners, and employ a range of methods to do this, including searches based on intelligence.

“Last year, our records show that we found 594 mobile phones or SIM cards at Altcourse. Of these, 368 were intercepted by staff and never reached prisoners. The records also show our policies are having an impact, as through regular searching we found an additional 226 mobile phones or SIM cards, which were removed from prisoners. While mobile phones continue to be a challenge in prison, these figures, which have been rising each year, demonstrate that we’re having more success in keeping mobile phones out of the prisons we run.”

A Prison Service spokesperson said that the number of finds of illicit mobiles and SIM cards “demonstrates the Prison Service’s ability to take effective, sustained and targeted action against people who seek to get around our security measures”.

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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.

Each of the Wilcox State Prison’s 1,862 inmates were strip searched, then removed from their cells and placed in a holding room. Officers then entered two at a time, sometimes accompanied by a member of the K-9 unit.

By the end of the shakedown, officers had confiscated 32 cell phones, 21 weapons and small amounts of marijuana and meth. Most of the items were well hidden: behind walls, in ceilings or inside of a broken sink.

They said their biggest focus is finding and removing cell phones. Prison warden Robert Toole said they are just as dangerous as weapons.

“Once that one cell phone makes it in, it just opens up the flood gates,” he said. “It allows inmates to communicate, to carry on criminal activity outside the walls. It allows inmates to intimidate possible witnesses.”

Contraband cell phones can be replaced by the meshDETECT secure cell phone solution to reduce the demand for smuggled cell phones and control their use for criminal activity

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