In May of 2011 we wrote about a British prison that solved the problem of contraband cell phones by installing landline telephones in each of the cells of a jail. The results were fewer smuggled phones, less violence, and even fewer failed drug tests! Now another prison in the U.K is taking the same approach.

For existing jails and prisons where the installation of a hard wired wall phone is impractical due to cost and infrastructure limitations, a secure prison cell phone solution such as meshDETECT will achieve the same results with no capital outlays.

Prisoners have been given telephones inside their cells despite ministers promising to crack down on perks behind bars.

Convicts at a young offender institution in Kent in the United Kingdom have become the first in state-run jails to be given personal landlines that they buy credit to use at any time of day or night.

They can only ring numbers approved by the authorities and cannot receive calls on the handsets, while the cost of installing them is being covered by BT.

If the pilot scheme is deemed a success it could be copied in public sector prisons across England and Wales, having been used for several years in privately run institutions.

But it is taking place at the same time as the new Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, has vowed to stop prisoners spending all day in their cells watching television or playing video games.

Unions also fear that governors are putting phones in cells in order to reduce the amount of time that criminals spend on landings or communal areas, allowing them to reduce the number of guards required.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “Greater use of IT could transform prison education, resettlement and family contact but as a complement to, not a substitute for, good professional staffing.

“No one wants Big Brother hi-tech prisons with everyone held behind their doors and no human interaction.”

The deputy general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, Harry Fletcher, said: “There must be safeguards that these phones are not used to contact, harass or intimidate victims. The same goes for drug dealing and organised crime.”

However he added that the move may reduce the number of mobile phones being smuggled into prisons.

Until recently inmates had to queue up to use phones on prison landings if they wanted to speak to friends or family, prompting a black market in mobiles brought in by visitors. Many jails now allocate time slots for individual prisoners, who must give details of who they want to call, to use the public handsets.

But some newly built jails run by private firms have started to feature phones inside cells, and now HMYOI Rochester has become the first state-run prison to install them.

In the pilot scheme, selected cells on two wings have been fitted with telephones at the Victorian institution, which is currently home to about 600 men aged between 18 and 21 who have been sentenced to up to four years behind bars.

Under the BT system, they must set up a personal account that is accessed by a PIN and give the authorities the names, addresses and phone numbers of the people they wish to call so a list can be approved. The calls are monitored and recorded by the authorities, and inmates are warned against saying anything linked to crime, escape plans, threats or coded messages.

Prisoners must buy credit to use the BT Pinphones and calls to landlines cost 9p a minute but ringing a mobile costs 20p a minute. There is no limit to how many calls they can make.

Inmates can also have televisions in their cells for £1 a week while those given “enhanced” status for good behaviour are allowed PlayStation consoles from home and can sleep on their own bedding.

Last month the prisons watchdog, Nick Hardwick, said too many prisoners were “lying on their backs in their cells watching daytime telly” because of a lack of money and staff to give them useful activities.

But some of the in-cell perks could be scrapped as ministers try to stop prisons being seen as “holiday camps”.

A law is being passed that will allow jamming devices to block mobile phone signals in jails, while access to satellite TV channels could be removed.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: “Ministers are reviewing the policy around the incentives scheme for prisoners. It is crucial that these incentives are appropriately earned and that they have credibility with the public.

“A pilot scheme has been running at HMYOI Rochester which gives prisoners limited access to phones in their cells. In cell phones are subject to the same security controls that apply to phones on the communal landings, no prisoner can receive calls on this system.

“This pilot will be evaluated and the results considered along with the other benefits associated with the incentives scheme.”

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This news report discusses the problem of contraband cell phones smuggled into a Ghana prison. According to the article, “the most precious commodity inside the Nsawam prison today is the mobile phone.” It also states, “The use of mobile phones in our facilities has become a serious business raking in money for both inmates and prison officers.” As discussed in an earlier blog post, contraband cell phones are now seen to be the prison system’s greatest threat here in the United States as well. Any solution to this problem, whether here or abroad, should include a strategy to address the demand for as well as the supply of contraband cell phones.

Hardened criminals in Ghanaian jail houses may be coordinating armed robbery attacks and running narcotic drug businesses from behind bars, investigations by The Globe newspaper have revealed.

The Globe has established growing use of illegal cellular phones in Ghana’s jail houses, especially at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison. There is a long lasting ban on the use of mobile phones behind bars. Our investigations established that ever smaller handsets allow phones to be smuggled in by prisoners, visitors or corrupt staff.

On January 9, 2012, the total number of inmates in the nation’s jail houses stood at 13,588. At the Nsawam Prison, official figures put the population of inmates at 3,512. But, it is unknown the unknown the number of inmates at Nsawam who have access to the smuggled mobile phones. “Indeed, the most precious commodity inside the Nsawam prison today is the mobile phone”, said a worried junior officer with the Ghana Prisons Service, who wished not to be named. There are fears illegal phones could fuel prison drug trading, bullying and gang problems.

Behind bars, phones can cost 300 Ghana cedis (~$174 US), the phones are usually paid for by relations and friends of phone-seeking inmates. Smuggled into the prisons by relations of inmates and in many cases prison officers, the phones are used to organise narcotic drug deals, intimidate victims, and plan armed robbery attacks from prison with criminal gangs outside the prison walls. “The use of mobile phones in our facilities has become a serious business raking in money for both inmates and prison officers,” the officer said.

“It is an issue that has been with us for some time now,” the young Prison Officer told the Globe newspaper, adding: “Top management of the Prison Service is aware, but has virtually refused to deal with the problem.” “Visitors to the facilities and some corrupt senior officers are the ones fueling the illegal practice,” said the officer.

The revelations come at the time some European countries and some states in the United States have stepped up crack-down on illegal mobile phone use in their jail houses, after a series of bloody prison violence blamed on phones smuggled into prison cells.

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An interesting article on the use of electronic devices to aid in managing and controlling prisoners. According to the prison warden, “It’s a way of managing them. When an inmate gets idle, they start fighting. Allowing prisoners to own entertainment devices gives the guards something to take away if a prisoner misbehaves. If there’s a rule violation, the first thing we do is take away their property.” Given that most prisoners seek contraband cell phones to be able to stay in contact with their family and loved ones, providing a secure cell phone solution would offer the same behavior management opportunity.

When RCA introduced its first television, the set was encased in clear Lucite, so visitors to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York could see the electronic innards and walk away confident that the sound and video were not a mere trick.

Decades later, the venerable electronics company resurrected clear-case televisions for a different purpose: to ensure prisoners could not hide contraband in their cells. And though RCA has dropped out of the market, prison cells in Maryland and other states still are filled with the unusual TVs made by other companies.

Televisions, personal music players and video game systems — all must be see-through under the regulations of most Maryland prisons — have become an important tool for wardens. Giving prisoners something to occupy their minds while in the cells, and connecting them to the outside world, can reduce tensions among inmates and decrease the chance of guards being caught in the middle of a fight.

“It’s a way of managing them,” said Bobby Shearin, warden at North Branch Correctional Institution, the state’s maximum security facility in Cumberland. “When an inmate gets idle, they start fighting.”

Inmates like to watch the news and sports to stay informed, he said, and television schedules help them create a routine.

The younger generation of inmates Shearin oversees have grown up glued to television and video games, he said. More than 60 percent of Shearin’s inmates, many of whom are serving long sentences, have televisions and more than 30 percent have video game consoles.

Tyrone Johnson, a 47-year-old Baltimore native, began a life sentence at Jessup in 1997 for first-degree murder. He has gone through several sets during his time locked up; most recently he had to buy a television that was equipped to handle the digital transition in 2009.

“Having a television, you [are] still outside,” Johnson said. “You can keep up with the world.”

Prison officials are wary of anything coming into their facilities that may harbor prohibited items. Julie Reynolds, a customer service supervisor for the California-based prison supply company Walkenhorst’s, said she’s even seen a cellphone smuggled inside a jar of peanut butter.

While letting electronics into prisons does increase the chances that contraband can be smuggled into or hidden in cells, clear-case electronics make it simpler for guards to perform inspections.

“If we can’t get them clear,” Shearin said, “then we’re not letting them in this place.”

Contraband, particularly cellphones and weapons, is a serious problem in correctional institutions and for wardens, the fewer places that inmates can hide items, the better. More than 20 people, including three Baltimore men and a man from Gwynn Oak, pleaded guilty in federal court this spring for racketeering that stemmed, in part, from their use of cellphones behind bars to coordinate crime.

Stewart Walkenhorst’s company makes clear TVs under the brand name Hiteker and sells about 6,000 sets per year. “It’s a small market,” he said, adding that because it’s so expensive to set up the manufacturing tools for clear encasements, “you don’t have the big majors chasing it.”

Several catalog companies, like Walkenhorst’s, provide secured direct mail to prisons of many clear electronics, from beard trimmers to typewriters, said Warden Tyrone Crowder, who runs the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center, a Baltimore facility at which inmates are held until they are transferred to a permanent location. Company employees, who have undergone background checks, pack the products and they’re not handled by anyone other than mail carriers until they arrive at the facility.

“Facility by facility, as we start working with them, gives us the rules they go by,” said Reynolds. She said that the company works with 19 facilities in Maryland and each one has slightly different rules about what items can be purchased by inmates.

In spite of these precautions, allowing inmates to have clear televisions does not eliminate security problems. Although all Maryland prisons limit TVs in cells to 15-inch screens or smaller, the televisions themselves can be used as weapons.

Last month the state’s attorney for Allegany County brought first-degree murder charges against Michael Rodell Boyer, 37, a Baltimore-area inmate who is serving a sentence for armed robbery and accused of bludgeoning his cellmate with a television.

Crowder said the ability to purchase entertainment electronics by mail is a privilege for the 64 inmates who are housed long-term in his facility — a privilege that can be taken away.

Inmates in his facility work within the prison, doing jobs like cleaning and maintenance, he said, and make between 90 cents and $1.20 per day depending on the skill required. They can use this money and money given to them by family members — never taxpayer dollars — to buy items for their cells, he said.

“Every year, we allow inmates to order a package,” said Crowder, noting that inmates are given the opportunity on a rolling schedule based on the “anniversary” of their entry into the facility.

Some inmates save their wages for months to have enough money to buy catalog items, Crowder said, and televisions are among the first things inmates will purchase, after food and clothing. He said about 85 percent of his long-term prisoners have televisions in their cells.

Crowder said allowing prisoners to own entertainment devices gives the guards something to take away if a prisoner misbehaves. “If there’s a rule violation, the first thing we do is take away their property.”

Items taken from a prisoner are not kept in the facility, Crowder said. Property is sent to family or friends for safekeeping, he said.

Once the item leaves the facility, it has been compromised and will not be returned to the prisoner, he said. That means that the inmate must start the process of saving — and waiting for their yearly package — all over again, Crowder said.

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