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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Smuggled cell phones in prison are a problem globally as this article from South Africa highlights. As in the US, the contraband phones are believed to be smuggled into the prison by guards. In addition to the scam mentioned in the article, “Prisoners use the phones to contact family and spouses, or to surf the internet.” Just as they are used in prisons here.

Sixty cellphones, sim cards, a bucketful of phone chargers, earphones and adaptors were seized by warders at Westville Prison’s Medium-B cells, in a surprise night raid this week.

It was the second such raid since the Daily News reported on a phone scam conducted from within the prison. The first raid netted 50 cellphones.

It was reported that a scam artist caught people by pretending to be a policeman, threatening them with arrest if they did not settle outstanding traffic fines by depositing money into a Money Market account. He taunted a victim by saying he was calling from inside Westville Prison.

Prison sources revealed they were closing in on the culprit.

Prisoners use the phones to contact family and spouses, or to surf the internet.

Phones recovered ranged from Blackberrys to R99 models, and are sold to prisoners for between R200 ($25) and R2 500 ($63). Some warders are believed to be behind the smuggling of these items.

They are estimated to be raking in more than R20,000 ($2537) a month by selling cellphones, drugs and other prohibited items, high ranking sources at the prison have revealed.

Five Westville Prison warders are being investigated by the Department of Correctional Services for corruption.

Prison section head, Mfanafuthi Nxumalo, on Thursday confirmed the raids and corruption charges against the warders.

Also found in Wednesday night’s raid were four home-made knives, stolen food, electric sandwich toasters, dagga, mandrax and cash.

Items confiscated are banned from the prison, especially cellphones which are not allowed on the premises, even by staff, he said.

Medium-B houses more than 4,000 criminals – almost twice its capacity – many of whom are serving multiple life-sentences for rape and murder. Fewer than 200 warders are deployed in the section.

The sources said the latest raid was conducted among less than a quarter of the inmates because of limited resources and staff shortages at the prison.

“After lockdown, they tend to take out all this stuff. It’s not hidden and is often found lying on their bed or in their possession.

“During the day these things are stashed all over the place. But, when routine day searches are conducted, phones and sim cards have been found hidden in soap bars and the prisoners’ mouths. (A cellphone) is often wrapped in plastic and then inserted either in the rectum or vagina. The prisoners can conceal things in many parts of their bodies. Unfortunately the prison does not have the latest scanners, X-ray machines and other devices that can detect cellphones. Despite various checks by warders, they get past us.”

Attempts were made to try to cut off the cellphone signal completely, but prison authorities were told it could have fatal consequences.

“This technology apparently affects how a pacemaker works and could end up killing someone.”

During Wednesday’s raid, nine prisoners were found with the phones on them. The other cellphones were found in the cells.

Confiscated phones are kept for about a month. Those suspected to have been used to conduct criminal activities are given to police and the rest are destroyed – smashed to pieces with a hammer, the sources said.

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Traditionally, tobacco and stamps have been the preferred currency in prisons. But now it appears that in some prisons cellular airtime on contraband smuggled phones may be the new prison currency. According to this article, prisoners in a South African jail are using smuggled cell phones to run a scam to get wireless airtime.

The problem with only addressing the supply side of the contraband cell phone problem is that demand still exists. Airtime, unlike tobacco, cannot be easily found or confiscated. Stored in a wireless network billing record and accessed via a tiny and easy to conceal SIM card, it is a “virtual” currency within a prison.The emergence of cellular airtime as a new form of prison currency can be preempted however by co-opting the demand for airtime through the provision of a secure prison cell phone solution such as meshDETECT.

Inmates at Westville Prison in Durban, posing as policemen, are believed to be behind a cellphone scam that has raked in thousands of rand.

Posing as either a Superintendent Naidoo or a Warrant Officer Reddy, the prisoner calls the victim and warns them they either have outstanding traffic fines or a warrant has been issued for their arrest. They are then ordered to pay or go to jail.

A senior warder at the prison told the Daily News that inmates find their victims through advertisements, articles, happenings and classified columns in magazines and newspapers.

The Daily News has spoken to three victims of the scam and this week three cellphones were seized from cells during daily raids, said the source.

The calls, according to the source, are generally made on a Friday and the victims are told they will be kept behind bars over the weekend if they do not pay up. Victims are either told to transfer money into a Money Market account at Checkers or to buy airtime and transfer it to the inmate’s cellphone. The source said that cellphones and airtime were a sought-after commodity in prison with inmates trading these for drugs, cigarettes, food, toiletries, pornography and cash.

He said cellphones were also used by the prisoners to run online businesses and sell airtime.

However, Department of Correctional Services spokesman, Nokuthula Zikhali, denied that the scam was perpetrated by prisoners at Westville. She said according to policy, offenders were not allowed to keep cellphones.

Zikhali said offenders could only make calls from telephone booths located outside their cells and at a specific time.

In the latest incident on Friday a Tongaat man was almost conned out of R1 800 by a “Warrant Officer Reddy”.

“Reddy” called the man and told him he had R1 800 in outstanding traffic fines and needed to deposit the money into a money market account. He threatened to go to his workplace and throw him in the back of a police van if he failed to comply.

Fortunately, the man smelt a rat and alerted the police. But this did not deter “Reddy”, who made more than 45 calls demanding the money.

“A policeman tracked the call to Westville Prison. When I confronted him (on the phone), he wished police luck in finding him. He said there were thousands of prisoners at Westville,” the victim said.

A Durban North estate agent, Zakia Peer Mahomed, said a “Warrant Officer Reddy” called her last week, telling her that her husband had been arrested for non payment of traffic fines. He told her to buy airtime and send it to his phone.

Then, he asked her to meet him at a supermarket in Phoenix to hand over R1500 in cash.

“He was very pushy. But, I caught on it was a scam. I called the police. They tried to track him but were unsuccessful.”

Durban North couple, Umberto, 75, and Roberta Josi, 74, were not so lucky. They were conned out of R1 650 by a “Superintendent Naidoo” earlier this year. Roberta said “Naidoo” called her husband and told him that Roberta had been arrested and was at Westville Prison. He demanded R1 650 for her immediate release.

“I was not at home at the time and my husband could not reach me on my cellphone. He was afraid and went to a supermarket where he bought the airtime. ‘Naidoo’ then called him back and asked him for the voucher number on the receipt. He then downloaded the airtime on to his phone.

“He then had the cheek to ask my husband to buy another R2 000 worth of airtime. By this time Umberto realised it was a scam. He reported it to the Durban North Police. A private investigator later told us the calls were being made from the prison.”

All three victims had their names and cellphone numbers published in various newspapers before they were called.

The prison source said cellphones and sim cards were smuggled into the prison through corrupt officials and relatives of the prisoners.

“We have found the phones and sim cards in the strangest of places. Some of them hide it in their rectum, in bars of soap and in the bunk beds. Money is not allowed in prison, so airtime is the preferred currency. Some of the prisoners have sim cards with over R5 000 airtime loaded on to it.”

Umesh Raga of the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services said the allegation of any inmate being in possession of a cellular phone was of concern since these were prohibited in correctional centres. He said they were unaware of the scam.

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The creative smuggling of contraband cell phones into prison is not just limited to the Untied States as this article on a remote-controlled helicopter smuggling cell phones in Thailand shows.

We guess that it’s a generally accepted rule that cellphones aren’t allowed in prison, and we’re guessing it’s for a huge variety of reasons. After all the point of prison is to serve your time and rehabilitate yourself, and not to spend all day yakking on the phone, right? So how is it that in movies and television shows, prison inmates end up with cellphones? While the movies and television shows have been scripted, it seems that in Thailand, a rather innovative and unique method of smuggling cellphones has been uncovered.

It has been reported that a remote-controlled helicopter had crashed near a prison in Ratchaburi according to the local police yesterday. The helicopter was said to have been carrying cellphones along with cellphone parts/components and millions of Thai Baht, which we’re guessing was meant to be delivered to the prison inmates. Discovered inside the shockproof box that was attached beneath the helicopter, police found seven cellphones, four satellite phones, a number of SIM cards, eight cellphone batteries and three cellphone screens.

It seems that the cellphones, SIM cards and phone parts were meant to be sold on the prison’s black market. It was reported that parts and phones were worth anywhere between 2 million to 3 million Thai Baht, but it seems on the black market, it could have easily gone for 10 million Thai Baht ($321,387).

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An article from the Cayman Islands regarding the problem of detecting contraband cell phones and SIM cards in prison. The meshDETECT secure cell phone solution does not use SIM cards to avoid the problem of prisoners sharing a phone by swapping SIM cards.

A new machine acquired by HMP Northward will help in the fight to stop inmates getting access to mobile phones and SIM cards, which officials believe may be contributing to the current surge in violent gang killings. Prison authorities have admitted for some time that cell phone use by inmates is a significant problem. The governor revealed Friday that police suspect the ‘orders’ for some of the recent killings could have come from inside the prison walls via cell phones. The new BOSS II, which was bought by HMP Northward using a donation from the FCO, is a hyper-sensitive, non-invasive metal detector that can pinpoint where on the body a visitor or inmate could be hiding something as small as a SIM card.

While regular body scanners may pick up cell phones — though as phones get smaller and slimmer they too become harder to detect — SIM cards are particularly difficult for prison officers to find as they are much easier to hide. With SIM cards in their possession, inmates can share just one phone inside the prison, enabling them to not only intimidate witnesses, carry on illegal businesses such as drug trading and keep in touch with gang members, but also, as authorities now believe, they can use the cards and cell phones to order hits on people outside the prison from literally inside their cells.

The chair, which cost $7,500, was unveiled in the visitor’s room at Northward Prison on Friday morning when Governor Duncan Taylor explained that it works a little like an airport scanner. He said it would make it much more difficult for the cards and phones to be smuggled into the prison and improve security.

“We face a challenge with prisoners who are bringing contraband, mobile phones and SIM cards into the prison, which allows them to make inappropriate contact with people on the outside,” the governor said as he revealed the concerns that the latest frightening surge in violence may have connections to the prison.

“Cayman is in a very difficult place at the moment following five murders in eight days,” the governor said on Friday morning when the chair was unveiled to the media. “We believe that there is some contact between the criminals in Northward and some of the people involved in these crimes in the last few days.”

Dwight Scott, the prison director, said that sweeps were being conducted throughout HMP Northward to try and locate the phones and cards. He said that this issue was one of the biggest headaches in all corrections facilities and they were doing everything they could to try and find them. He explained that phones enable people in prison to continue their criminality, from ordering murders to carrying on their drugs businesses. Although the technology to detect phone signals does existy, HMP Northward does not have access to it.

The chair, Scott said, was only one of the tools that the prison continued to use to tighten security and he explained that it would also help prevent weapons getting inside the prison walls. Although the prison does not have a reputation for excessive violence or a particular problem with weapons, Scott said it was important to remain vigilant. The director pointed out that the chair will also help to detect weapons, such as prison-made knifes, known as shanks, or razor blades.

During a demonstration of the sensitivity of the chair, it was able to detect a paper clip in the mouth of one of the prison officers. Scott said the chair was also mobile, meaning it can be used to scan new inmates, visitors, staff, prisoners after they have had contact with visitors, or when they are returning from court, and it could also be used for spot check searches.

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Providing prisoners secure cell phones is an idea whose time has come. The latest British prison to provide land-line phones in prison cells to control the contraband cell phone problem is being chosen for a trial of service. This is after a similar successful trial in a private UK prison. According to the article, the reason for this latest initiative is, “to stamp out the illegal use of mobiles in prisons and the flourishing black market in smuggled phones. It will also end the scenes, made familiar by television dramas, of inmates queuing to use public phones on prison landings.”

Rather than undertaking the cost and hassle of wiring phones in cells, the benefit of using secure cell phones such as those provided by meshDETECT, would be that they can be handed out only to those who have earned them through good behavior. Still, this is a step in the right direction. The time has come to address the demand side of the supply-and-demand equation of smuggled cell phones in prison

Prisoners could soon have telephones installed in their cells, allowing them to make calls from their beds.

Officials are searching for a suitable jail to pilot the scheme and HMP Isis, a young offenders’ institution in South East London, is believed to be the most likely choice. The prison can hold 252 inmates in single and double cells, and each cell would have a landline phone installed.

The move is intended to stamp out the illegal use of mobiles in prisons and the flourishing black market in smuggled phones. It will also end the scenes, made familiar by television dramas, of inmates queuing to use public phones on prison landings.

Many people will regard the move as another perk for prisoners – but prison staff are backing the plan.

Mark Freeman, deputy general secretary at the Prison Officers Association, said: ‘We think it will improve control in prison.

‘There is a major problem with mobiles at present. People smuggle them in and there is a massive black market. Others bring in SIM cards. The more business-minded prisoners run the operation like a BT monopoly.

‘Then there are the problems with public phones on wings. There are complaints about long queues and inmates having phone cards snatched from them by bullies. Often only one of the three phones will be working.’

Mr Freeman said calls from cells would be recorded and monitored but insisted that, as staff would no longer have to supervise queues for the public phones, the scheme would save money in the long run.

Prisoners will have to pay for their own calls by buying phone cards or credit from the prison shop. They will also be issued with a personal account and PIN number which has to be dialled before getting an outside line. There will be no incoming calls.Inmates will have to supply prison staff with the names, addresses and phone numbers of people they wish to call

These lists will be vetted and agreed in advance to ensure that prisoners are not harassing victims or organising drug deals or other criminal rackets from behind bars.

Calls to sex lines and bookmakers will also be barred.

Precise details are still to be finalised and may vary from prison to prison. A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: ‘The Prison Service is currently exploring the possibility of a pilot installation in a state-run establishment. We cannot be more specific about where the pilot site will be at this stage.’

The plan has angered some in the criminal justice system.

Chief Supt Derek Barnett, president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said: ‘This sends a confused message to many police officers who have spent time and effort investigating serious crimes and seeing the perpetrators sent to prison.

‘It’s important for prisoners to keep in touch with their families, but it would be difficult for police, victims and the public to understand this latest idea.’

John Howson, a council member of the 28,000-strong Magistrates’ Association, also accepted the importance of prisoners keeping in touch with family, but said a phone should be a ‘reward for hard work and good behaviour’.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, warned of the dangers of abuse.

He said many men were in jail following serious harassment of women, often ex-partners, and that one jail ¬currently held about 40 stalkers.

The vetting system would have to be very thorough to ensure there was no abuse, Mr Fletcher said. ‘Some women have had serious breakdowns and the danger is that the harassment could continue.’

Phil Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, West Yorkshire, is to raise the issue with Ministers. He said: ‘This is a ridiculous idea and is happening because the prison service is being run for the convenience of prisoners and staff.

‘The point is to be able to reduce the number of officers on duty. It’s another example of the justice system going soft, which makes the public lose confidence in it.

‘Many prisoners have a better standard of living inside than on the outside. No wonder people ask why prison doesn’t stop them reoffending.’

Phones have been installed in privately run prisons but this is the first time there has been a move to put them in state-run institutions.

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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would be toughening the conditions of imprisonment for terrorists but some jailors, it seems, did not “get the memo.”
According to the Yisrael Hayom newspaper, two jailors have been caught smuggling cell phones to imprisoned terrorists. A third reported being offered a bribe for a similar action.

One jailor was arrested recently and questioned by the Unit for Investigating Jailors on suspicion he smuggled cell phones to Hadarim Prison.

Another jailor, a former officer at the Ketziot Jail, has begun serving a jail sentence after confessing and being found guilty of smuggling cell phones to terrorists.

In addition, a jailor at Ne’er Sheva Prison reported that a certain security [i.e. terror, Ed.] prisoner offered him a sum of 150,000 shekels for assistance in smuggling in a cell phone.

Israel Prisons Service Commander Lt.-Gen. Aharon Franco has recently said that he intends to show zero tolerance toward personnel who collaborate with the smuggling.”

The terrorists have other creative means to get their hands on cell phones. In recent weeks, IPS has successfully stymied an attempt to smuggle 50 cell phones, 50 chargers and 50 SIM cards inside a delivery of vine leaves for terror prisoners at Ketziot.
A family recently visiting a terrorist tried to smuggle two cell phones in the undergarments of the prisoner’s wife. Two matching batteries were placed in the belt buckles of his sons.

Another woman, aged 67, was caught at the gate to Ramon Prison with a cell phone in her brassiere.

Since January, a total of 76 phones, 55 chargers, 51 memory cards and 435 SIM cards were caught at the entrances to the prisons.

The IPS has instructed staff to carry out thorough checks on whoever enters the jails and is currently evaluated more advanced machines for scanning people who wish to enter.

Source

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