The U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) released a report last month on the Federal Bureau Of Prisons mounting overcrowding issues entitled, “Growing Inmate Crowding Negatively Affects Inmates, Staff, and Infrastructure.”

The GAO report excerpts below demonstrate how the introduction of our solution can increase telephone access, reduce prisoner movement while improving morale, and offset the loss or reduction of family visits:

Telephone Access

“The larger number of inmates also limits inmate access to the telephone to call home and computer to e-mail family members and other contacts. For example, at one facility we visited, each housing unit had three telephones for about 156 inmates.”

Clearly the deployment of secure prison cell phones would significantly improve the 1.2% telephone-to-prisoner ratio at this housing unit as well increase call access throughout the overcrowded BOP system.

Prisoner Movement

“BOP has implemented controlled movement for inmates, which is a practice that officials from one of the five states we reviewed also reported using, specifically to deal with crowded conditions. For example, because of crowded conditions, one way that BOP restricts inmates’ movement in high and medium security facilities is by instituting earlier in-cell hours at night for inmates.”

In many cases, prisoner movement is required to allow the detainee access to the wall phones. With a secure prison cell phone, no movement is needed and those detainees who are restricted to their cells for longer hours can now use that time communicating with family and loved ones. This will help reduce frustration with the longer in-cell time.

Visitation

“Crowded visiting rooms make it more difficult for inmates to visit with their families. BOP headquarters officials said the quality of the interaction between an inmate and family can positively affect an inmate’s behavior in prison and aids an inmate’s success when returning to the community. Each BOP facility has visiting space to accommodate the number of inmates that the facility was designed to house and a visitor capacity to enable staff to manage the visitation process. The infrastructure of the facility may not support the increase in visitors as a result of the growth in the prison population. Further, with more inmates, the visitation process requires more staff resources…Limited visiting capacity and the larger numbers of inmates can lead to frustrations for inmates and visitors, such as when visits are shorter or visitors are turned away because there are too many visitors on a particular day.”

Reduced visitation time can be offset with expanded telephone time via a secure prison cell phone. These phones are essentially “wireless prison payphones™”, with all the monitoring, recording an forensic capabilities of the wall phones.

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A recent article on the website of the British newspaper The Guardian discusses the impact of the high cost of telephone calls from U.S. prisons. This issue has become more and more prominent, culminating in the recent bipartisan letter to the FCC calling on the Federal Communications Commission to stop phone companies from charging inmates what they call unreasonable and predatory rates to make phone calls.

The Guardian article highlights the critical importance of telephone communication between prisoners and their loved ones. It is a key tool to reduce recidivism we support by offering a secure prison cell phone solution which enables more calls with more privacy while providing prisons a new source of funding to offset lower prison pay phone rates:

When a person is sent to prison, one of the most obvious and important ways to ensure a successful re-entry to society upon release to is maintain and strengthen familial bonds during incarceration. Most families are willing and eager to stay connected with their loved ones. Unfortunately, however, there are many barriers in place to prevent them from doing so, not least of which are the prohibitively expensive and sometimes downright exploitative costs.

One woman I spoke to (I’ll call her Jennifer) described the difficulty of staying in touch with her brother, who has spent the past 10 years in prison.

“After 10 years, my brother was finally transferred to a location where it’s only half a day’s drive (550 miles) to visit. One has to make an appointment up to three weeks in advance to be able to visit; the hotel rates in the area are double anywhere else; and the emotional and financial costs to get there are great because families are made to share the cost of punishment in very literal ways.”

Jennifer outlined some of those “very literal ways”, such as the $70-100 on gasoline per trip, the $90 per person for a hotel room, the $50-100 for food in the visiting room. Besides, she pays $40 to maintain a landline she wouldn’t otherwise have in order to be able to receive the one 3-5min collect call her brother is allotted each month, plus up to $20 for the cost of the call itself. That comes to around $400 for one five-hour visit and one five-minute phone call. Hardly what you’d call “meaningful contact”. But it is nonetheless necessary.

At least in Jennifer’s case, she and her husband are fortunate enough to be able to absorb these costs. That, however, is not the case for many families who cite similar experience. Most prisoners are housed in facilities located between 100 and 500 miles from their homes; some are housed more than 500 miles away. That makes regular contact visits impossible to many people – and means that phone contact is all the more crucial.

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As this article shows, the effort to keep contraband, such as cell phones, out of prisons and jails is extensive.The irony is that there is little effort to address the demand side of the equation. As the article states, “visitation and phone privileges are the two things inmates fear losing more than anything else. They’re also the privileges corrections officers are most reluctant to take away, leery of eliminating what may be a prisoner’s main incentive to behave himself.” Prisons can offer a secure cell phone solution to reduce the demand for contraband cell phones and at the same time add another privilege that can be used to control behavior.

The visiting room at the Maryland Correctional Training Center bustles with activity.

Inmates and the people who’ve come to visit them sit separated by a high brick wall, catching up on the latest news from home or perhaps just enjoying seeing each other again.

Inmates are allowed two visits per week, as long as they behave, said Capt. Steven Myers as he stands along the side wall of the room.

Visitation and phone privileges are the two things inmates fear losing more than anything else, Myers said. They’re also the privileges corrections officers are most reluctant to take away, leery of eliminating what may be a prisoner’s main incentive to behave himself.

But the visits can also pose another problem for the prison’s staff.

The wall, built by inmates in the prison’s masonry program, keeps prisoners from switching shoes with a family member under a table, or the many other methods of sneaking contraband into the prison, Myers said.

Contraband consists of anything a prisoner isn’t allowed to have, with some of the most common items being cellular phones, tobacco products and drugs, said Erin Julius, a spokeswoman for the Division of Correction.

Prisoners enter from one side of the visiting room and wind their way around the brick wall to the chairs on their side. Visitors enter from the other side of the room and take a seat across from them.

The high wall between prisoners and visitors, built by inmates in the prison’s masonry program, cuts down on the flow of contraband, Myers said.

Touching is mostly forbidden during visits, with the exception of one quick embrace per person per visit.

The wall between them is so high that just their heads visible over it. Any hands reaching across to exchange items would likely stand out to the handful of corrections officers who carefully scan the room.

To make doubly sure, inmates are led into a small room after their visit and strip-searched for any illicit materials.

In another part of the prison, a specially designed chair can scan prisoners’ body cavities to check for contraband.

X-ray machines scan inmates’ belongings, and facilities have specially trained dogs that can sniff out cellular phones, Julius said.

Cell phones are a particular source of consternation for corrections officials.

According to a report from the state’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Maryland prisons confiscated 1,128 cell phones in fiscal 2010.

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s office recently announced that the state had received a $350,000 federal grant to reduce the number of cell phones in Baltimore prisons.

The funds are targeted to increase staffing to crack down on gang members and other criminals who use cell phones to continue their criminal activity inside jails, and to ferret out prison staffers who help inmates get phones.

“Too many inmates are using contraband cell phones to harass witnesses and victims and orchestrate crimes behind prison walls, defying prison rules and law enforcement,” said U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., in a press release.

Source

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Another news item about the use of dogs to find contraband cell phones in prison, this time in Ohio. According to the article, “Policy experts say efforts to reduce the effects of mobile devices in jail are less effective than having good contraband policies in place to reduce them.” We couldn’t agree more. The best way to reduce the contraband value of cell phones in prison is to co-opt the problem by offering a secure prison cell phone solution.

Man’s best friend is being trained to sniff out cell phones in correctional facilities, since mobile communication devices are becoming an increasingly prevalent source of contraband in jails and prisons.

As widespread use of mobile devices in regular society spills over to the incarcerated population, correctional officers are devoting much of their time battling over removing the devices, and the associated issues they bring into the prison environment.

To address the problem, Ohio’s Butler County got a cell phone-sniffing, 18-month-old chocolate Labrador named Tank, an invaluable resource in keeping the visitation rooms and jail free of contraband.

Tank is able to smell the lithium battery in cell phones when directed to do so by his correctional officer and owner, Chris Morris.

“This is just play to him,” Morris said after Tank found a cell phone by scent and then indicated his discovery by sitting and staring at the suspicious spot until Morris found the banned item.

Tank stays in his kennel in the jail, leaving to complete a specific check if anything is suspected or for his routine rounds of cells and other general areas throughout the day.

The dog came to the county from West Virginia’s Ultimate Working Dogs center, which trains law enforcement dogs, and lives with Morris and his family.

Ultimate Working Dogs’ Tracy Landis reports the demand for cell phone detection dogs has been increasing with the popularity of the devices.

“They are used in jails and prisons because cell phones are contraband there just as much as narcotics,” Landis said.

In addition to the dog’s cell phone sniffing capability, county officials said just the dog’s very presence serves as a deterrent. If those incarcerated know the dog will be making rounds, they may be less likely to try to obtain and keep the outlawed devices.

States like South Carolina might look to Ohio for solutions to their problem, which they are attempting to remedy by legislation. Officials in the Palmetto State, who are battling prisoner use of social networks for both entertainment and harassment of victims and further criminal enterprises, have looked into punishing anyone outside or inside the prison that helps an inmate with a social networking account with a $500 fine and an extra 30 days in prison.

And in Texas, a prisoner broke out of a Beaumont facility using a smartphone to enlist the help of a Facebook fan to help with the getaway, prompting Lone Star state officials to further clamp down on the devices.

Policy experts say efforts to reduce the effects of mobile devices in jail are less effective than having good contraband policies in place to reduce them, and Tank is turning out to be a good, albeit cuddly, policy enforcer.

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