Using contraband cell phones to communicate via social media is increasingly a problem in prisons around the country. Cell phones equipped with internet access and cameras give prisoners the ability to access and post updates and images on Facebook and Twitter. As this article states, cell phones are “contraband that can fetch $1,000 in prison, or $100 to borrow for one call.”

The meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution blocks internet and camera access on its custom cell phone devices.

Damon Valery logged his holiday wishes early last year, in a Facebook posting Dec. 1. “This is the worst part of the year 4 me cause of the holidays,” Valery wrote, “so i’m saying happy holidays now cause i don’t know when i’ll b back!”

Valery had been serving a 25-year-to-life sentence since 1999, and was transferred to Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad last August. He was convicted of killing Dante Jones, his girlfriend’s 2-year-old nephew.

On March 6, Valery was found unresponsive in his cell and transported to Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, where he died shortly after. The prison’s investigative service unit is looking into his death as a possible homicide.

“Compared 2 some of the madness that’s going on in the world my situation ain’t that bad,” Valery wrote on his Facebook wall April 1 last year, “because somewhere, somebody lost their life or least didn’t get 2 eat!!”

That harsh irony is exaggerated by the fact that Valery’s affectionate, if sporadic, posts to friends and relatives were illegal. He posted using a mobile device – contraband that can fetch $1,000 in prison, or $100 to borrow for one call.

Communications in prison are closely watched. Phone calls are capped at 15 minutes, recorded and interrupted by a voice alert reminding interlocutors they’re on the phone with an inmate. Similarly, all outgoing mail is stamped to identify its origination point, so recipients can discard unwanted letters.

“A lot of people would choose not to talk to an inmate,” Salinas Valley State Prison spokesman Lt. Michael Nilsson says. “I think it’s important that people know who they’re talking to. It’s not the same as on the streets, where you meet someone at a night club.”

But cell phone use in California prisons has been rapidly rising, with 1,400 phones discovered in 2007 and more than 15,000 found in 2011. In response, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 26 late last fall, making it a misdemeanor to possess a phone in prison, and to smuggle one in.

Prison staff continue to conduct random contraband searches to detect phones, and deploy dogs trained to sniff out prohibited items, including cell phones.

Law enforcement officers on the outside are also keeping an increasingly watchful eye on social media. Where police once prowled the streets for crime tips, they can now surf the web.

“It’s on a catch-as-catch-can basis,” says Salinas Interim Police Chief Cassie McSorley. “We’re not making cases every week off of social media, but it’s just one more tool that’s being used.”

Salinas police regularly watch YouTube videos posted by Salinas gangs, but got one of its most serious crime tips via Facebook last week.

Salinas City Councilwoman Gloria De La Rosa’s 23-year-old son, Gabriel Reyes, was arrested March 5 after Gang Task Force members saw a gun for sale posted on his publicly visible Facebook wall. He’s been charged with unlicensed sale of a firearm, marijuana possession, a probation violation and carrying a concealed weapon.

McSorley says social media hasn’t changed what cops do, but it has affected how they do it, and how fast. “We have to adapt our methodology and investigation techniques,” she says. “We used to meet people in a dark alley. Now everybody has a cell phone.”

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The challenge in reducing prison contraband, whether it is smuggled cell phones or drugs, is addressing not only the supply, but the demand for the contraband. As noted in the article below, “spending on substance abuse programs has fallen to $9 million from $11 million in the past two years. The demand is there, the need is there and we’re seeing much of that need being unmet.”

Just as there are substance abuse programs in prison to reduce the demand for drugs, there must be a demand-side strategy to address the desire for contraband cell phones. With meshDETECT, the prisoner desire for more communication with family is met in a secure and compliant manner.

Cocaine, alcohol, explosives, knives and handcuff keys are part of the haul at federal prisons as officials across the country struggle with a rising tide of contraband.

Between 2007 and 2011, the amounts of drugs, intoxicants, weapons and other unauthorized items confiscated by prison staff has steadily risen, in some cases by more than 170 per cent, according to documents obtained by the Star.

The number of seizures of intoxicants, for example — LSD, THC, amphetamines and steroids, to name just a few — rose to 1,779 in 2010-11, up from 1,295 three years earlier.

Similarly, the number of seizures of weapons, including razor blades, homemade knives, firearms, explosives and pipes, rose by 22 per cent to 900 over the same period.

Perhaps most striking is the surge in seizures of other unauthorized items, such as cellphones, tattoo-making materials, lock picks and rope, from 991 to 2,697.

What the numbers don’t say is whether the amount of contraband items smuggled into prisons is increasing or whether a recent push by the government to intercept these materials is paying off.

“I suspect that detection is getting better, so you do see an increase in seizures,” said Howard Sapers, Canada’s Correctional Investigator. “What we really don’t know is whether drug use inside prisons is up or down, whether the presence of weapons is greater or lesser than it used to be.”

In August 2008, the federal government pledged $122 million over five years in an effort to eliminate drugs from federal prisons. The funding went toward purchasing additional security equipment, such as drug ion scanners and X-ray machines, increasing the number of drug-detecting dog teams, and was intended to improve security intelligence both inside and outside prisons.

Among the goals, according to the government, are more successful rehabilitations and a safer system for guards and the country’s 14,000 federal inmates.

The Star also asked CSC for the number of employees disciplined for bringing contraband items into prison, but the agency said it did not have any such records. However, last September, Don Head, commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, told a parliamentary committee that it had dismissed 12 staff members that year for smuggling contraband into prisons.

Inmates caught with contraband material face a variety of sanctions, depending on the nature and seriousness of the transgression. Disciplinary measures include warnings, loss of privileges, an order to make restitution, fines, performance of extra duties, segregation from other inmates and, in some cases, the laying of criminal charges.

NDP public safety critic Jasbir Sandhu notes that while seizures of drugs appear to be increasing, the percentage of offenders testing positive for illegal drugs in CSC’s own random urinalysis tests has remained steady at around seven per cent since 2007-08.

“They’re spending $122 million to stop drugs coming in, but that hasn’t happened because the urinalysis results haven’t changed,” Sandhu said. “The benefit to the taxpayer has been zero.”

Jason Godin, regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, which represents 6,800 federal officers, says tracking down contraband has become increasingly challenging as inmates develop new and creative ways to smuggle items inside.

“We’ve seen everything from things inside stuffed animals, tennis balls and drugs tied onto arrows and shot into the yard with a crossbow,” Godin said.

He added that offender profiles have changed over the last 15 years, with a larger percentage of inmates more likely to be affiliated with gangs. The relationships developed with other gang members on the outside have resulted in greater complexity when it comes to smuggling contraband, he said.

While there is little debate over the need to have good detection of contraband materials, Sapers said he is alarmed by the government’s recent shift away from treatment programs in favour of beefed-up security measures.

“We’ve been encouraging the service to increase its programming and treatment capacity, and often these are linked to addiction and mental health,” Sapers said.

He noted that spending on substance abuse programs has fallen to $9 million from $11 million in the past two years.

“The demand is there, the need is there and we’re seeing much of that need being unmet.”

CSC could not provide the Star with budget expenditures for 2010-11 due to “temporary technical issues,” but a 2010 overview of the agency pegs total corrections expenditures 2008-09 at $2.28 billion, up nearly 40 per cent since 2004-05. The average cost of keeping an inmate incarcerated rose from $87,919 to $109,699.

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An interesting overview of the problems smuggled cell phones in prison create in jails throughout the United States. As usual however, the discussion of possible solutions focuses on reducing supply and signal jamming, but offers no consideration of a strategy reducing the DEMAND for contraband cell phones.

By co-opting prisoners’ legitimate desire for more frequent and easier telephone access to family, prisons can reduce the overall demand for contraband cell phones and reduce the incentive to smuggle them into jails. This demand can be met by offering prisoners the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution.

Devices behind bars can have deadly results. Jamming could aid in the fight, but bugs need to be worked out.

Guards found the dead tomcat last summer, lying between two fences that separate inmates at Phillips State Prison in Buford from the outside world.

Curiously, the cat’s belly had been stitched together, so suspicious prison officials took a closer look. Inside the animal, they found eight cellphones. Someone had tried to toss the dead feline over both fences, but the throw fell short.

At Hancock State Prison, a basketball filled with 50 cellphones was rolled through a hole in a perimeter fence. A guard at the same prison allegedly tried to smuggle in a phone wrapped in aluminum foil, disguised as a baked potato.

Georgia prison officials say cellphone smuggling is the most pressing problem they face. Cellphones are such a hot commodity inside the walls they’re being confiscated by the thousands.

And officials say the phones are a menace, wreaking havoc inside and outside the cell blocks. Phones are used to coordinate attacks inside the prison walls and are enabling inmates to continue criminal activity outside of prison. They’ve been used to threaten witnesses and coordinate simultaneous protests at multiple prisons.

“They present a clear and present threat, not only to the inmates themselves but to our staff and to the public,” Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens said. “They’re not about calling mom on Thanksgiving. They’re for power, money and gangs. It’s a big business and a tremendous problem.”

Over a one-year period ending in July, corrections officials confiscated more than 8,700 illegal cellphones, Owens said. “And if we’ve confiscated 8,700 cellphones, the question I have is how many have we not been able to seize?”

Behind bars, the cellphones, mostly prepaid, cost $200 to $600 each.

Owens said a jamming device that blocks cellphone signals would allow prison systems to combat the problem. But the Federal Communications Commission has not allowed states to use it, despite a report from the National Institute of Justice that indicates cellphone use is a problem at prisons across the country:

*In Texas, a death row inmate who killed four people used a cellphone to threaten a state senator, prompting a lockdown of the entire prison system.

*In Nevada, a prison dental assistant was convicted of helping an inmate get a cellphone to plan a successful escape.

*In South Carolina, a captain in charge of intercepting prison contraband was shot six times in the chest at his home after an inmate used a cellphone to call an ex-con to carry out the hit.

Even the most dangerous inmates — those who are the most closely monitored — have been caught with cellphones.

While Fulton County courthouse killer Brian Nichols awaited trial in jail, someone smuggled phones to him on two occasions. Nichols, who was later convicted of killing a judge, a deputy and another man in the courthouse rampage, used the phones to plot an escape and send lewd photos of himself to his pen-pal girlfriend.

Last year, California prison officials found a cellphone on notorious mass murderer Charles Manson — the second one found on him in two years.

In Georgia, it is a felony to smuggle a cellphone into prison, with a maximum punishment of five years behind bars. The prison system asks the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to extend sentences by six months for all inmates caught with cellphones.

But the smuggling hasn’t landed only inmates in hot water. Last year, 312 civilians and 59 prison staff members were charged with trying to smuggle contraband inside state prisons, and most cases involved cellphones, Owens said.

Owens, who has overseen the system since 2009, says he has an easy answer when asked what his biggest problem is.

“It’s not our budget, not staffing, not infrastructure, not overcrowding,” he said. “It’s cellphones.”

Before cellphones, inmates could only use prison pay phones, and officials decided who inmates could call, when they could call and how much time they could spend on the phone. The calls were recorded. But inmates say cellphones are much less costly than the expensive collect calls paid for by their families.

On Nov. 28, Gov. Nathan Deal wrote the FCC, asking it to reconsider its position on the use of jamming devices to disrupt cellphone calls in prisons. Deal noted that two recent disturbances at state prisons “only continue to underscore the nationwide epidemic of illegal cellphone usage in prison facilities across the United States.”

The incidents — one at Telfair State Prison, the other at Hancock State Prison — left 15 inmates hospitalized and a guard with a leg injury, Deal wrote. Illegal cellphones were found to be the catalysts behind the two fights, the governor wrote.

Deal said prison officials have investigated a number of technologies to fight cellphone use in prison and are convinced that cellphone “jammers” are the most cost-efficient and timely response.

“Carving out an exception for the use of this technology in prison facilities is sound policy to protect inmates, corrections employees and the public,” he wrote.

The FCC shares Deal’s concerns and is working with prison authorities and others to address the matter, a commission spokesman said. There are concerns, however, that the technology poses a risk of interfering with legal calls outside the prison grounds, including calls to public safety, the spokesman said.

Other states use dogs to sniff out illegal cellphones. At least two states have used a technology that, instead of jamming calls, prevents calls from reaching their destination. But Owens said those methods are too costly. He estimated that “managed access” technology would cost the prison system millions of dollars. Using dogs to find cellphones also would end up being too expensive, he said, because he would have to hire and train dozens of new corrections officers.

Tod Burke, a criminal justice professor at Radford University in Virginia who has studied the issue, said there are legitimate concerns that jamming devices could disable phones used by law enforcement.

“If I’m driving by as a police officer, I’d be concerned whether a jamming device inside a prison is going to jam my own frequency,” Burke said. “But the technology is advancing and can probably be isolated enough so that it’s not going to interfere with phones outside the prison setting. And in rural areas, where many prisons are located, who are you going to interfere with anyway?”

District Attorney Fred Bright said cellphone smuggling is a big problem in his sprawling eight-county circuit, which includes a number of Middle Georgia and east Georgia prisons.

His office prosecutes 40 to 50 cases a year involving inmates, prison workers and visitors, he said. This included an indictment against a guard caught trying to sneak in a cellphone he’d stuffed inside a fish sandwich, Bright said.

The GBI is investigating a cellphone smuggling case at a unspecified prison in Middle Georgia, said the agency’s director, Vernon Keenan. It began as a drug smuggling case but has broadened in scope, he said.

Keenan added that the GBI is often called in when there are assaults inside the prison system and during those investigations agents have learned that cellphones were involved in coordinating the attacks.

One prison inmate recently killed a fellow inmate during an argument over a cellphone, Owens said, declining to give more details because the investigation is ongoing.

Federal prosecutors in Atlanta recently convicted Carlos Garcia for using a cellphone smuggled to him inside Valdosta State Prison to transfer $250 from a 93-year-old woman’s credit union account to his inmate account.

The 36-year-old inmate had obtained the victim’s credit union account numbers and PIN number from an accomplice, who had stolen the woman’s wallet while she was shopping in Conyers.

At the time, Garcia was serving a 10-year term for identity theft and fraud convictions in DeKalb County. After transferring the money to his prison account, he tried to steal again from the elderly victim, who had $120,000 in the bank, prosecutors said.

Garcia used his cellphone to make online purchases. But, by that time, law enforcement officials were already onto the scheme and blocked the transactions.

Prosecutors said the inmate was charged with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft after he called the credit union to find out why the charges were not going through.

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Contraband cell phones are a problem in Canada as well as the US. As this article describes, one method of getting the contraband into a prison is to throw it over the prison fence.

Staff at a federal prison in central Alberta have intercepted a package of illegal drugs and contraband cellphones intended for inmates inside.

Correctional officers at Bowden Institution, 40 kilometres south of Red Deer, found the contraband during a perimeter check about noon on Tuesday.

Fortunately for authorities – but unfortunately for who-ever threw the bundle over the perimeter fences – the package landed in an area off-limits to inmates.

“This particular bundle was similar to the size of a football and well taped up,” said Dan Spiller, assistant warden at Bowden.

Correctional Service of Canada officials estimated the hashish oil, crystal methamphetamine, heroin and cellphones hidden in the package would be worth more than $41,000 in the black market inside the medium-security prison.

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Another report on the international issue of contraband prison cell phones, this time from India. This prison will up its number of cell phone jammers from 9 to 23 to combat smuggled wireless phones. However 80 cell phone jammers are really needed

Illegal use of mobile phones in Asia’s largest prison requires more than 80 jammers to combat it, yet the prison is equipped with only nine.

This was brought to the notice of Delhi high court by the amicus curiae (friend of the court) appointed by HC in a case where it is monitoring attempts by the administration to prevent use of cellphones inside the jail complex. The amicus also apprised the bench that there were certain jails inside the complex that had absolutely no jammer facilities.

On learning of severe shortage of jammers, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Sanjiv Khanna on Wednesday directed the state government to install 23 more by August 15. The government has already sanctioned the purchase and installation of these devices.

Appearing for the state government and Tihar administration, Pawan Sharma had earlier informed the high court that nine jammers were installed and 23 more to be fitted soon.

HC was hearing a matter taken up by it on its own after an unidentified prisoner wrote to a chief metropolitan magistrate (CMM) in 2009 that rampant use of mobiles by inmates was on the rise. The CMM forwarded the same information to HC after conducting initial investigations indicting the prison administration. The high court had then directed the authorities to seize all the phone instruments and install effective jammers immediately.

In the past few years, at least nine mobile phones and 11 SIM cards were found inside Tihar Jail. Mobile phones are included in the articles listed as prohibited to be taken inside prisons.

According to the Prisons Act of 1894, any person found possessing a prohibited item inside the jail is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or fine not exceeding Rs 200 or both.

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