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Contraband cell phones pose serious security risks in correctional facilities, enabling inmates to bypass monitoring systems, coordinate crimes, and maintain outside connections. Detecting and confiscating these devices is a critical challenge.
Corrections Challenges
For most of us, a cell phone is a lifeline to the worldsomething we can’t do without. However, a cell phone is more than a convenient gadget in a corrections facility—it can be a dangerous weapon. Contraband cellular phones have long been a security and public safety concern for correctional facilities worldwide, and successfully detecting, locating, and confiscating them before they do damage is one of the biggest challenges these facilities face. While other types of contraband create issues inside the prison, the damage that an inmate can do with a cell phone can extend far beyond prison walls. Reported cases of contraband cell phone use include:
- A Texas death row inmate used a contraband phone to threaten a state senator and his family.
- An inmate escaped from a Kansas prison with the aid of a cell phone smuggled in by an accomplice.
- A South Carolina prison official was ambushed and assaulted at his home in an attack coordinated from the inside using a cell phone.
- Inmates extorted an Alabama family by threatening to harm an incarcerated relative
- Prison officials even caught Charles Manson communicating to his followers with a contraband cellphone when he was still alive.
Nature and Scope of the Threat
The scale of the problem is staggering. Large state systems can confiscate 10,000-15,000 contraband phones every year. Cell phones have become the most popular contraband item in correctional facilities, ahead of drugs and tobacco. One purpose of incarceration is to remove people from the environment that led to their criminal actions.
A cell phone allows inmates to maintain their prior connections and reduces the effectiveness of behavior corrections and programs. Using a cell phone bypasses the in-house telephone system, evading call monitoring and recording systems and reducing the revenue generated by inmates using the in-house pay phone. The problem goes beyond cellular, as inmates may illicitly use today’s smartphone Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities to establish or maintain connections outside the corrections facility.
Creative Smuggling
With nothing but time on their hands, methods of smuggling phones into a facility are varied and creative. Visitors can sneak them in, or drones can fly and drop them in. Trained cats and carrier pigeons have been used to deliver phones, and with inmates willing to pay well over $1000 per phone, there have been many corruption cases of Corrections staff and officers.
Issues Faced By The Corrections Industry
Corrections departments face limited or shrinking budgets and need more staff, especially in recruiting and retaining corrections officers. These issues drive the need to make optimal use of all available resources, especially personnel resources. Finding ways to increase monitoring and protection with less staffing is the standard budget model for today’s prison facilities.
Previous Efforts to Mitigate the Problem
Several types of mitigation to the cellphone problem have been deployed over the years, with little success, based on the persistence of the problem. Pat downs and using wands at entry points are spot checks, are labor intensive, and may miss devices that are deactivated or turned off. California DCR estimated that continuous wanding of all inmates would cost $20M in personnel costs yearly at their facilities.