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Thread: Prison Cell Phones

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Prison cell-phone blocking to start

    State prison officials confirmed today that Texas’ first program to block calls from smuggled cell phones will begin later this year at two prisons where contraband remains a problem.

    The move comes almost four years after a condemned killer on death row triggered a statewide scandal and unprecedented lockdown of the entire corrections system by calling a powerful state senator on a smuggled cell phone, then threatening to kill him for calling in police.

    Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee at a Capitol hearing that a “managed-access system” is to be installed by the end of the year at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont and the McConnell Unit in Beeville.

    Livingston said the new system will not jam cell phone calls in and around prisons, but will instead intercept all outgoing calls. Only those to numbers that have been pre-approved will be allowed to go through, and the rest “will go to a dead end,” he said.

    “It will help us eliminate the use of smuggled cell phones by eliminating their viability to make outgoing calls,” he said. “Jamming of all cell phone is illegal. This system is legal … because calls are allowed to go through.”

    The new system is much like one that had proven successful at curbing smuggled cell phones in California prisons. Texas officials had confirmed in April that they were looking into the California system.

    Livingston said the new managed-access technology is being paid for by Century Link, a private firm that operates pay phones inside Texas’ 111 state prisons. Officials earlier said the cost was around $1 million per prison.

    “These two prisons have had the most significant ongoing problems with (smuggled) cellphones and that’s why they were selected,” Livingston said. “There are no plans at this time to go beyond these two units.”

    In 2011, three years after the crackdown, officials said 148 smuggled cell phones were confiscated at Stiles and 88 were found at McConnell.

    State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the committee that was briefed on the new system this morning and the lawmaker who was phoned from death row by convict Richard Tabler in October 2008, applauded the decision.

    “It’s about time,” he said.

    As a result of calls to Whitmire and this reporter, Tabler was busted and the entire prison system was locked down for weeks while officials did a cell-by-cell search for smuggled phones and other contraband. Hundreds were found, including several dozen more on death row.

    Upset that his mother and sister were also arrested on charges related to the case, Tabler then threatened to kill Whitmire and this reporter, but apologized two years later, saying he had found the Lord.

    He remains on death row awaiting execution for the 2004 shooting deaths of Killeen nightclub owner Mohamed-Amine Rahmouni, 25, and his friend Haitham Zayed, 28. Tabler was also charged in the murders of dancer Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amber Benefield, 16.

    The shootings were part of what Bell County authorities described as a bizarre plot that targeted the four victims and eight or nine other people.

    http://www.statesman.com/blogs/conte...king_to_s.html
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  2. #12
    Senior Member Member nmiller855's Avatar
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    I'm glad they are finally putting a stop to the cell phone use by inmates. That will cut down on many financial transactions. Now if they could curtail the drugs & tobacco market, the economy would be about commissary items & that should be policed closer, also. There I'd no need for a prisoner to spend $85 a week. That money dhould ge spent in restitution or court costs.

  3. #13
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Texas prisons install equipment to block calls, texts from inmates’ illegal cellphones

    The nation’s largest state prison system is turning to electronic weaponry to combat the persistent headache of illegal cellphones smuggled to inmates.

    Final testing starts next week at the first of two Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons where equipment has been installed to block calls to and from unauthorized phones.



    The equipment, known as a managed access system, also diverts text messages, emails and Internet log-in attempts from contraband phones. It should be in full operation at the Stiles Unit outside Beaumont and the McConnell Unit near Beeville next month. The two prisons together hold some 5,000 inmates and historically have been the worst of the more than 100 Texas prisons when it comes to cellphone smuggling.

    The goal is to make cellphones useless, or at least not worth the risk of extended prison time or reduced privileges, said Michael Roesler, senior warden at the Stiles Unit.

    “If the cellphone becomes the proverbial paperweight, the reward of taking a chance of losing their good time, their status, their class, their parole possibility, is too great a risk for them to hang on to,” he said.

    Contraband phones have been a problem in prisons around the country. Prison administrators consider them security threats, used by inmates to plan and coordinate escapes, run illicit businesses and threaten and harass crime victims or authorities.

    In South Carolina, a corrections officer in charge of keeping contraband out of the prison where he worked was shot at his home in 2010 in a plan devised by inmates using smuggled phones.

    Five years ago in Texas, a death row inmate made threatening calls to a state senator, prompting an unprecedented governor-ordered lockdown of the entire 150,000-inmate prison system to sweep for contraband.

    Late last month, several gang members at the McConnell Unit were arrested after trying to sell stolen vehicles to Mexican drug cartel members in a scheme coordinated with illegal phones. The investigation also netted 17 former corrections officers accused of selling phones and drugs to prisoners.

    Overall, Texas corrections authorities seized 630 cellphones from inmates in 2011 and 738 last year, including 110 from Stiles.

    “It’s something we take very seriously,” said Tommy Prasifka, deputy director of the agency’s institutional division. “We’ve worked very hard to come up with ideas, constantly looking at better ways, whether its technology or utilizing searches and shakedowns.”

    In California, where nearly 120,000 inmates make it the second-largest state prison population behind Texas, a managed access system went into use in November at the Avenal State Prison. Nearly 4,800 unique devices and 1.13 million communication attempts were detected in the first month, said Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

    “We’ve had so many incidents related to inmates with cellphones, from organizing criminal gang activities, harassing victims,” Simas said. “Those kinds of serious incidents can occur when someone has a cellphone that can’t be monitored by us.”

    Charles Manson, arguably the state’s most notorious inmate, has been caught at least twice with phones.

    Texas officials say they have had less of a problem than California in part because California, blaming cost considerations, does not subject employees entering prisons to metal detector searches.

    It’s not clear why Stiles and McConnell have more contraband cellphones than others, Texas officials said, although they noted the prisons also have more disciplinary problems among inmates.

    “I think a lot of it depends on location of the facility, plus the type of offender,” Prasifka said.

    The managed access systems that are being installed won’t interfere with 911 calls, but they will only other calls and communication only to and from registered devices. The top managers at the prisons will decide which ones can be registered.

    The “brain” of the new system, locked in a closet a few steps from the warden’s office, consists of two electronic boxes a bit bigger than two large microwave ovens, filled with blinking lights and wires and a couple of rows of boxes that resemble CD cases. The apparatus connects with a similar single box of electronics in the individual prison buildings. Those boxes receive signals from unobtrusive, plastic squares mounted in the buildings.

    “It behaves as a cellular tower,” said Mike Bell, the prison system’s information technology director. “Based on ID numbers, if you’re on authorized list, it allows the call to go through.”

    The system also tracks the number of attempted calls from various locations, giving wardens information on where to target searches.

    Word of the new system already has trickled down to inmates, and authorities are aware of conversations suggesting different kinds of phones be tried to circumvent it, said Lori Davis, an agency regional director.

    “These guys have 24/7 to try to figure out ways to beat the system,” department spokesman Jason Clark said. “We have to continuously try to stay ahead of the curve.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...9_story_1.html
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  4. #14
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Miami-Dade jail officer accused of smuggling in cell phones, drugs

    Known by inmates as “The Love Doctor,” a corrections officer was arrested Friday on charges of secretly smuggling cell phones and drugs into the Miami-Dade County Jail in exchange for cash.

    The arrest of Miami-Dade Corrections Officer Lavar Lewis, 27, was the culmination of a 19-month investigation into persistent smuggling problems at the jail. At least three other corrections officers have been scrutinized in a probe that is still active.

    Lewis’ arrest is another black eye for a jail system that has been plagued by recent scandals and remains under federal oversight for shoddy conditions and poor medical care.

    ‘When any law enforcement official, in this case a correctional officer, betrays his position of trust, our entire community suffers,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

    At least one inmate found with a cell phone, Benson Cadet, is part of a notorious gang known as the Terrorist Boys, whose members are facing trial and the death penalty for a dozen murders and other shootings.

    While behind bars, Cadet even brazenly posted photos and court documents relating to supposed “snitches” on a Facebook page created under the fake name Sean Storms, according to an arrest warrant. Investigators believe the efforts were done to intimidate the witnesses.

    Lewis, a day shift officer since his hire in November 2008, has been suspended since September 2013. He was charged with unlawful compensation and conspiracy to introduce contraband into a jail and was being held Friday night at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in West Miami-Dade.

    Public correction prosecutors and jail internal affairs investigators say they uncovered the scheme by sifting through reams of cell phone records and persuading inmates to inform on Lewis. Investigators also watched him as he made a suspected money exchange with a girlfriend of one inmate.

    Several inmates told investigators that Lewis was seen or known to be the main source of contraband cell phones, according to a warrant filed by Miami-Dade Corrections Sgt. Rene Vila. Records showed his cell phone was used to communicate with at least 40 inmates at the jail over the months.

    Then in September, investigators learned that Lewis would be meeting with a female friend of a inmate Victor Ramirez to accept a cell phone, dubbed a ‘pop tart” in inmate coded speak, and the methamphetamine known as Molly.

    Undercover detectives spied Lewis meeting with the woman, Diane Clohesy, near a South Miami-Dade Taco Bell, apparently making the exchange. At the same time, investigators believe, Ramirez called Clohesy from behind bars – and she put Lewis on the phone as the two met. Clohesy has not been charged.

    According to the warrant, Ramirez later admitted to striking a deal with Lewis to smuggle in the phones and drugs, with the help of Clohesy and two other women on the outside. The total payment for one exchange: $1,000.

    Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/1...#storylink=cpy
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  5. #15
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Prisoners' use of smuggled cellphones on the rise

    They're hidden in babies' diapers, ramen noodle soup packages, footballs, soda cans and even body cavities.

    Not drugs or weapons, but cellphones. They're becoming a growing problem in prisons across the country as they are used to make threats, plan escapes and for inmates to continue to make money from illegal activity even while behind bars.

    "You can pick states all across the country and you'll see everything from hits being ordered on individuals to criminal enterprises being run from inside institutions with cellphones," said Michael Crews, head of Florida's Department of Corrections.

    When two murderers serving life sentences escaped from Florida Panhandle prison last fall, a search of their cells turned up a cellphone used to help plan the getaway, drawing attention to the burgeoning problem. It was just one of 4,200 cellphones confiscated by prison officials last year, or 11 per day.

    "The scary part is, if we found 4,200, we know that's not all of them," Crews said.

    And while prison officials are trying their best to keep cellphones out, it's not such an easy task. Jamming cellphone signals is prohibited by federal law, and it costs more than $1 million each for authorized towers that control what cellphone calls can come in and out of prisons. Some prisons even have to police their own corrections officers who sometimes help inmates receive contraband.

    In Texas, a death row inmate made several calls with a cellphone to state Sen. John Whitmire, who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee. Whitmire didn't believe it when he started receiving calls from death row inmate Richard Tabler.

    "He held his phone out, I guess outside his cell and there was a very distinct prison noise. He said, 'Did you hear that?' and I said, 'Yup. That's a prison,' " Whitmire said. "I said, 'How'd you get that phone?' He said, 'I paid $2,100 for it.' I said, 'How do you keep it charged?' He said, 'I have a charger.' "

    The calls continued, and Whitmire had the phone investigated. The month before, Tabler used 2,800 minutes and was sharing the phone with other prisoners, Whitmire said. Tabler's mother, in Georgia, was paying the bill and collecting payments from the other prisoners' families.

    Tabler asked Whitmire if he could help arrange a visit with his mother. When she arrived in Texas she was arrested for her part in the prison cellphone scheme. Tabler wasn't happy about that and made another call to Whitmire. "He said he was going to have me killed," Whitmire said.

    In other cases around the country, infamous murderer Charles Manson, imprisoned in California, was found with a cellphone under his mattress, twice.

    Two Indiana prisoners were convicted of using cellphones smuggled in by guards to run an operation that distributed methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs. A prisoner in Georgia was accused this year of using two cellphones to impersonate a sheriff's lieutenant and scam elderly drivers who had received red light camera tickets, getting them each to pay about $500.

    In Oklahoma, a newspaper investigation found dozens of prisoners using cellphones to maintain Facebook pages. The Oklahoman found about three dozen inmates who were disciplined by prison officials and its reporters found about as many who hadn't been caught.

    Florida prisoners have also been using social media with cellphones.

    "We've got inmates running their own blogs and all kinds of stuff. We stop it when we catch it, but it's very difficult to police the whole Internet. We don't have Internet police on our staff," said assistant corrections secretary James Upchurch.

    Those helping inmates smuggle phones into Florida prisons can be charged with a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. In Mississippi, the penalty can be 15 years for having a cellphone in prisons.

    As corrections departments keep looking for new ways to stop cellphone smuggling, prisoners are finding creative, new ways to get them in.

    "You may get a prepackaged, sealed ramen noodle soup — and it's completely sealed — the weight seems to be right, but when you open it, there's a cellphone inside," said Timothy Cannon, Florida's deputy corrections secretary. "They're very, very, very creative in the way they do some of these things."

    Phones have been hidden in the hollowed out centers of large stacks of legal documents. One corrections officer found two liter soda bottles that were used as floats outside a prison. When he pulled them out of a pond, bags containing more than a dozen cellphones each were found tied to them.

    "We've found cellphones and drugs in babies' diapers" during visitations, Cannon said. "If they think you'd never search an infant child, that will be the next place they go to try to get it in."

    Phones hidden in body cavities can't always be picked up by traditional metal detectors, and many are wrapped in electrical tape to further avoid detection.

    "We have found cellphones in the private area of visitors — I'm talking females and males," said Christopher Epps, head of the Mississippi prison system and president of the American Corrections Association. He said it's not unusual to find three phones in a body cavity.

    States are looking for new ways to find cellphones or to prevent their use. Epps said that includes recently installed netting held up by 50-foot poles to keep people from throwing bags over prison fences for prisoners to retrieve.

    Federal law prohibits jamming cellphone signals, but Texas, Maryland, California and Mississippi installed towers at some prisons that control what cellphone traffic is allowed. Phone signals reach the tower, but only authorized numbers are then passed through.

    It's not something Florida is considering because of the hefty price tag. Each system costs about $1.5 million, and with 49 major prisons, the state doesn't have the money to cover them all.

    Instead, it's testing machines that detect a cellphone's magnetic fields. And like Indiana and other states, Florida is also using dogs trained to sniff out cellphones.

    Still, with 100,000 prisoners in Florida, Crews knows the problem will never be completely solved, especially with the profit that can be made.

    "When you're talking about that kind of money, you're going to have a lot of people who are willing to do just about anything to get them in," Crews said. "For a large portion of these inmates, it is about making a dollar."

    http://www.heraldbulletin.com/breaki...es-on-the-rise
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    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  6. #16
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Ohio prisons cracking down on smuggled cellphones

    LEBANON, Ohio (AP) - The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections says it is cracking down on cellphones smuggled into the state's prisons.

    The state has spent more than $300,000 in the past year to buy electronic equipment used to detect cellphones, which inmates are not allowed to possess. They're being used in the state's 28 prison facilities and four regional parole offices.

    The Dayton Daily News reports that traditional detection methods turned up 483 cell phones in Ohio prisons last year, but many more likely go undetected.

    Lebanon Correctional Institution Warden Ernie Moore says cellphones behind bars are dangerous because they give inmates the ability to continuecriminal activity from the inside.

    Popular smuggling methods include using books and hefty legal documents with sections cut out to hold a phone.

    Information from: Dayton Daily News,

    http://www.daytondailynews.com
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