As we have written about before, wireless airtime and contraband cell phones have become the new prison currency. According to this article, smuggled cell phones in Ohio prisons are “a commodity inside our system,” used to sell and barter, and for personal use, said Vinko Kucinic, the corrections department’s chief security-threat investigator. Gangs, he said, are “power-based. If they can control the contraband trade, they have power.” A cellphone costing $25 on the street can fetch $500-$700 on the prison black market. One way to reduce the value of wireless airtime as prison currency is to co-opt the non-criminal usage by supplying the secure prison cell phone solution offered by meshDETECT.

Illegal drugs, weapons, tobacco and cellphones are flooding Ohio’s prisons, spurring a new wave of violence as rival gangs battle for control of the black market.

The frequency of violent disturbances has doubled since 2008, leading Ohio’s top prison official to launch a study about whether a March 2009 tobacco ban is stirring the trouble.

“Tobacco has become a currency that’s used in our prisons,” Director Gary Mohr of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said.

Ohio’s prisons house more than 50,000 inmates and will cost taxpayers $1.57 billion in fiscal year 2012. Contraband has long been a problem in the prisons, with inmates gaining access to it through the mail, visitors and corrupt prison employees.

But Mohr said something new is happening: People in the outside world have become much bolder about throwing packages of contraband over perimeter fences, where inmates on work details can pick them up. Mohr said that’s especially true at prisons like Dayton Correctional Institution and Allen Correctional in Lima, where prison grounds abut areas accessible to the public.

“All over this country, facilities are being assaulted, almost, by outside people,” he said. “It’s a battle that didn’t exist in the past, certainly (not) to the degree we have it now.”

The ban on tobacco created a new black market, while a younger crop of tech-savvy inmates is also fueling an increasing trade in cellphones and accessories.

Officials say convicts are using smuggled cellphones to continue running outside-world criminal activity from inside prison walls and to coordinate more contraband drops.

That contraband is sparking prison-gang violence, officials say. “It’s a commodity inside our system,” used to sell and barter, and for personal use, said Vinko Kucinic, the corrections department’s chief security-threat investigator. Gangs, he said, are “power-based. If they can control the contraband trade, they have power.”

Mohr, a former Ohio prison official who worked in private-sector prisons for years, said he was “made sick” by the increase in violence he noticed after returning as director in January 2011.

“I could not fathom what was going on in our system,” he said.

The director has ordered his research department to investigate the causes of disturbances involving four inmates or more to see how many are linked to the illicit tobacco trade. He expects results in three or four weeks.

The frequency of those disturbances has jumped on average from one every 28 days in 2008 to one every 14 days in 2010, the first full year after the March 2009 ban, Mohr said. The policy was imposed by Mohr’s predecessor, Terry Collins, in a bid to cut inmate health care costs.

Mohr stopped short of saying he may lift the ban.

“I would have to weigh whether the degree of violence” outweighs the health benefits of outlawing tobacco, he said.

Smuggling even in ‘supermax’

Drug seizures nearly tripled in the first 11 months of 2011 when compared to all of 2008, jumping from 526 to 1,402. The number of confiscated weapons went from 534 to 1,061 and cellphones from 36 to 201, according to department statistics.

Even at the “supermax” Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, ultrasecure home to the state’s most incorrigible convicts, officials confiscated five cellphones and three chargers last year.

A guard under investigation in one of the phone-smuggling incidents resigned in November, said prison system spokeswoman JoEllen Smith.

Officials believe there are several reasons why seizures are up. They say smuggling is on the rise, but guards also are getting better intelligence from inmate tips that’s leading to more confiscations.

Nobody knows, of course, how much contraband goes undetected.

There’s big money involved in contraband smuggling. For example, guards found a 6-pound package of tobacco last week at a prison honor farm.

Mohr said just one hand-rolled cigarette from that package might sell for $5 in the prisons, even though cash itself is contraband.

Tobacco has become “the No. 1 contraband item of choice,” said Mark Stegemoller, chief investigator at Warren Correctional near Lebanon. “It’s very, very profitable. We just removed a staff member a couple months ago who was making a lot of money bringing in tobacco.”

Tobacco smuggling isn’t illegal, however, so smugglers can’t be criminally charged.

Cellphones are more valuable still. Stegemoller said a cellphone costing $25 on the street can fetch $500-$700 on the prison black market.

Warren and Allen Correctional have recently acquired police dogs trained to sniff out tobacco and cellphones as well as illegal drugs in a pilot program that could expand to other state prisons. It is illegal to convey cellphones into Ohio prisons.

Prison officials in Ohio and elsewhere say cellphone smuggling presents a serious threat because the phones allow inmates to orchestrate crimes outside prison gates, plot escapes and uprisings, intimidate witnesses, public officials and crime victims, and make plans for more smuggling.

They can speak freely on cellphones, while their conversations on prison phone systems are monitored.

“A cellphone is a very dangerous thing in our system,” Kucinic said. “Many times, they can be more dangerous than a shank.”

Illegal cellphones a U.S. epidemic

Cellphone smuggling is reaching epidemic proportions in prisons across the country, and at least one murder was ordered from inside jailhouse walls.

Last year, a New Jersey inmate was sentenced to 14 more years for using a smuggled phone to run an identity-theft ring targeting big-box retailers, allegedly with the help of seven Cleveland residents, the Plain Dealer reported.

Guards at a Georgia prison last summer found eight cellphones stitched up in the belly of a dead cat that had been thrown over a fence. At another Georgia prison, somebody rolled a basketball containing 50 phones through a hole in a perimeter fence.

Inmates at seven Georgia prisons in 2010 also used smuggled phones to stage a simultaneous strike for better pay and working conditions.

In California, legislative analysts found that corrupt prison employees — who, unlike visitors, don’t have to pass through metal detectors — were the main culprits in smuggling phones. More than 10,000 cellphones were confiscated in California prisons in 2010 and, according to Time magazine, one guard admitted to making more than $100,000 in a single year from phone smuggling. Twice in two years, California prison officials found cellphones in the possession of Charles Manson, the cult leader who plotted the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.

In 2010, a South Carolina prison captain in charge of keeping out contraband was shot and nearly killed at his home, an attack ironically planned by an inmate with a smuggled cellphone.

Texas officials found 14 cellphones on death row inmates after one of them made threatening calls to a state senator in 2008.

And in 2007, a Baltimore jail inmate successfully used a smuggled cellphone to hire a hitman to kill a witness in his upcoming trial.

Ohio prison officials have found cellphones hidden inside items like tennis balls and stick-deodorant containers, tossed onto prison yards, and in camouflaged packages, including one that looked like a rock.

Prison officials have explored technology that could jam the signals of unauthorized cellphones, but such technology is expensive, fallible and may not be permitted under Federal Communications Commission regulations.

Some using dogs,low-tech security

In the absence of high-tech security measures, prisons are trying other measures.

At Warren Correctional, investigator Stegemoller uses Dyna, an 18-month-old Dutch shepherd, to sniff out illicit cellphones and tobacco, as well as marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

Dyna has been working since Nov. 1, homing in on the lithium in cellphone batteries. In a demonstration for Dayton Daily News, Dyna repeatedly and unerringly found cellphones and tobacco Stegemoller hid in a visitation room.

Dyna was purchased, along with a dog for the Lima prison, with a $27,000 grant. Allen Correctional had 117 phones confiscated since 2008, more than one-fourth of the system-wide total of 428.

It’s not clear how effective the dogs will be. Dyna has been responsible for only a handful of seizures so far. However, said Stegemoller: “The dog itself is a deterrent. As soon as I walk into a cellblock (with her), things start flushing and going out the window.”

Operations Deputy Rudy Pringle said during shakedown with the dog around Christmas, inmates “flushed so much stuff, it plugged up our sewage system.”

Prison officials acknowledge it’s a constant struggle to match wits with smugglers. “The prison lifestyle is a hustle,” Kucinic said. “In order to hustle, (inmates) want access to contraband. They’re very creative as to how they get (it) into our system. When you think you’ve got a (smuggling) method figured out, they’ll come up with a new one.”

Source

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A state-wide network of Georgia ex-cons smuggled contraband cell phones into prisons on demand and at $300 per cell phone. Drugs were also smuggled into the Georgia DOC facilities.

State, area and local investigators have uncovered a trail of cell phones, marijuana and tobacco that led straight to state prisons.

Several people were arrested here and in Colquitt County in connection with the operation. At least one other arrest is expected in Thomas County.

The statewide investigation showed a prisoner would request the contraband and tell the suspects where to leave the items.

The activity involved a vast network of co-conspirators outside the prisons.

The contraband would be left away from the prisons, said Kevin Lee, commander of the Thomas County/Thomasville Narcotics/Vice Division.

“The location could be on a work detail,” Lee explained. “It could be anywhere.”

The Georgia Department of Corrections Investigation Unit participated in the probe. The state agency did not respond Thursday to a request for information.

In Thomas County, Henry Curtis Ansley III, also known as Bubba, 38, 708 Hunters Chase, is charged with criminal conspiracy and unlawful possession of Hydrocodone.

Ansley is a former state prison inmate, who served time with another person charged in the investigation.

Lee said investigators found various addresses in Ansley’s text messages that told where he was to leave prison contraband.

“An ounce of marijuana will go for $400 to $500 in prison,” the commander said. A cell phone costs an inmate about $300.

When he was arrested, Ansley had hydrocodone pills in a pocket, and officers found more of the narcotic pain killer at his residence.

A corrections officer at Colquitt County Correctional Institute is charged in the case.

Richard Dale Roberts, 43, 10 Wiregrass Circle, Moultrie, is charged with violation of oath of office, felony possession of marijuana, illegal use of a communications device and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Steve Exum, commander of the Colquitt County Drug Enforcement Team, said charges on Roberts stemmed from information received from the correctional institute warden about contraband being brought into the facility.

Exum said Roberts was attempting to deliver marijuana to the correctional institute.

“It was marijuana he has just purchased from an FBI task force officer,” Exum explained.

Also charged in the case are Billy Joe Bowling, 35, 161 Dogwood Lane, Thomasville; Marcos Lewis Brewer, 22, 775 Flintside Drive, Cobb; and Jason Curry Icard, 39, 310 Highway 240 South, Buena Vista.

Bowling and Brewer are on parole, said Cpl. Kim Young of the Colquitt County drug agency.

Ansley and Brewer were in the same prison at the same time, Young explained.

Bowling, Brewer and Icard, who are charged with felony marijuana possession, were traveling in a red Honda Civic that did not stop at a stop sign in Colquitt County. A deputy made a traffic stop.

The marijuana was thrown from the car’s sunroof, Young said, adding that the contraband being tossed from the vehicle was recorded on video by a camera in the deputy’s car.

Seized in the Colquitt County arrests were a large quantity of cell phones and chargers and 90 bags of loose-leaf tobacco.

“They admitted to the intent of dropping the contraband at several state prisons, and they had several times prior,” Young said.

Source

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An article highlighting the money to be made by corrupt prison employees meeting the demand for contraband prison cell phones. This also highlights the need for a demand-side strategy to the problem of smuggled cell phones in prison.

A federal grand jury has indicted a California prison worker on charges that he accepted bribes from prisoners in exchange for cell phones and cigarettes.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy says medical office technician David Zamudio has been charged with committing honest services wire fraud during his employment at Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County.Zamudio is accused of wrongly taking in more than $33,000 in bribes from Feb. 2009 to Oct. 2010.

Authorities say he smuggled in the phones and tobacco products and received payment through MoneyGram or Western Union in return.

Source

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An article on the corrupting influence of prisoner demand for contraband items, and the willingness to pay for those items, has on correctional officers.

Contraband smuggling in prisons is a problem of supply and demand. Prison initiatives to reduce contraband, such as smuggled cellphones, should include strategies to reduce demand as well as prevent supply. The meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution co-opts the demand for smuggled cell phones, and therefore the contraband value of those phones.

Matthew Amos has wide, boxcar shoulders and steam-engine arms. On Friday he stood before a federal judge in Denver pleading for his life.

If he went to prison, Amos told the judge, he would have to pay fellow inmates for protection. Or he would be “whored out.” Or worse.

It’s what happens to former prison guards who end up behind bars.

“There’s no way I would be able to stay out on that yard without providing some kind of service,” Amos said, voice unsteady. “To be asked to go into that system will be asking me to be something I don’t want to be.”

This is where $17,200 in easy money landed him.

Amos’ conviction for smuggling tobacco into a federal prison in Florence provides a revealing glimpse into the jailhouse black market — where a single bag of tobacco can go for $1,000 and the key players in funneling contraband to inmates are often the very people hired to watch over them.

Between 2001 and 2010, the annual number of federal correctional officers arrested nearly doubled, according to a Justice Department report released in September. During that period, 272 officers were arrested, with many of those cases involving contraband-smuggling.

Tobacco, which was banned in nearly all federal prisons in 2004, has fueled a lucrative, illicit prison economy that proves irresistible to some prison workers. But employees have also been involved in smuggling cellphones, drugs and other items into inmates.

“Some officers can make more than they’re making from their actual paycheck just by smuggling in tobacco,” said Robert Worley, a professor of criminal justice at Texas A&M University — Central Texas, who has studied inappropriate guard-inmate relationships.

Bureau of Prisons? spokesman Chris Burke said prospective employees undergo background checks and have regular training in an effort to snuff out smuggling.

“We try to educate them on some of the traps that staff can fall into and on how inmates can manipulate staff,” Burke said, adding that most prison employees keep their noses clean.

At Amos’ sentencing hearing Friday, Florence associate warden Louis Milusnic said smuggling by employees has devastating impacts throughout a prison.

“When a staff member crossed over the line and becomes compromised . . . it erodes the authority the staff members have to have to keep control of the inmate population,” he said.

In many ways, Amos’ case is typical of the slow recruitment of prison workers into the black market. He worked as a recreation specialist at the prison, where he had regular contact with inmates, including one with whom he became friendly. After slipping the inmate some extra leatherworking supplies from time to time, Amos and the inmate began talking about a tobacco-smuggling scheme.

Amos would sneak in bags of tobacco to give to the inmate, who would handle distribution to customers around the prison, according to a recounting of the case in Amos’ plea agreement. The inmate’s girlfriend would collect money from the customers’ families and then put a chunk of it into a bank account for Amos. Amos was sent a debit card tied to that account, according to the plea agreement. His take was $400 per bag.

Between May and November 2007, Amos withdrew $17,200 from the bank account, according to the court document. A January 2008 tip from Amos’ inmate accomplice proved his undoing.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge John Kane took sympathy on Amos, saying he wanted Amos — a military veteran who served in Bosnia — to receive treatment and education instead of prison. He gave Amos five years of probation.

And Amos said he was sorry.

“I fully take responsibility for everything I’ve done,” he said. “I’m ashamed of not only what I’ve done but the image I’ve cast on everyone else.”

Source

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Kershaw County traffic officers made a prison contraband seizure while patrolling on I-20 Saturday.

Deputies say they conducted a traffic stop on Reco Maurice Bell of Columbia.

A routine driver’s license check indicated that Bell was driving under suspension and operating an uninsured vehicle, said Kershaw County Sheriff Jim Matthews.

While interviewing Bell, deputies noticed two duffel bags on the rear seat of his vehicle and asked for permission to search.

The officers said in these two bags were 23 individually wrapped one-pound bags of tobacco and 12 individually packaged cell phones with charging cords.

The officers said they recognized this discovery as being consistent with contraband that is often thrown over the fence at prisons.

On the street, these items are of little value, but in prison, tobacco is valued at $800 per pound and a working cell phone is worth about $500, said deputies.

Authorities said when asked about the phones and tobacco, Bell admitted that he was being paid to throw these items over the wall at a corrections facility, but he would not state which facility.

Kershaw officers said Bell was charged with driving under suspension (2nd offense) and operating an uninsured motor vehicle.

According to Sheriff Matthews, a national criminal records check revealed that Bell was connected with the “bloods” street gang.

Source

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