NOTES ON CELL PHONES IN – SMUGGLING AND USE

Innovative technologies that let inmates connect to the outside world are both an asset and a threat in prisons.

No research and development operation anywhere in the world can beat the innovative capacity of an inmate population. As long as there have been jails, there have been scheming how to evade their watchers, if not the altogether. This abundance of creativity keeps correctional organizations busy finding countermeasures and inventing new technology to keep the prisons secure and the staff and inmates safe. Of these technologies, communications is the present focus of ingenuity on both sides of the bars.

E-mail for Inmates

The Arkansas Department of Correction (DOC) is considering providing inmates limited access to e-mail. According to an October 2009 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, people who wished to communicate with prisoners held at two units at a Newport, Ark., prison could pay a small fee to send messages to the inmates. Corrections staff would receive the messages, review them, and print them out for delivery to the inmates' cells. Prisoners would have to respond to the messages by conventional snail mail, although the Arkansas DOC will consider expanding the program to allow inmates to send their own responses. As with the incoming messages, the inmates' traffic would also be reviewed by staff before it was sent.

Corrections professionals typically regard this program as a classically bad idea, but it is in use in institutions in other parts of the country, and is so far working well. Moving written communications between inmates and "the outside" from paper to electrons eliminates a common contraband pipeline. Even thin envelopes can conceal drugs and cash intended for introduction into the inmate economy.

E-mail with the $0.44 per-message cost assessed by the system provider is cheaper than the collect call surcharge attached to most outbound telephone calls from inmates. In Arkansas, these calls cost $4.80 for an in-state call and $10.70 for a call to an out-of-state number. Inmates have a legitimate need to maintain contact with their families if they hope to avoid total institutionalization, and it is easier to monitor written communications than to record and have a staff member monitor every phone call.

A service called einmate.com wants to take this initiative a bit farther. einmate.com contracts with an institution, then allows family and friends of inmates to establish an account and transfer money for charges incurred for "their" inmate. Once institution staff approve the relationship, the inmate and his associates can send e-mail to one another, with staff reviewing each message before delivery.

Computers used by inmates have no hard drives or direct connection to the Internet, and staff determine how much time each inmate is allowed to have on the computer. einmate.com proposes to expand the service farther to allow video visitation between the inmate and his approved correspondents.

Video Visits

Speaking of video visitation, another program in Yakima, Wash., plugs another conduit for the conveyance of prohibited items-inmate visits. As of November, inmates incarcerated in the Yakima main jail and downtown annex will receive visits through a video interface only. The county constructed cubicles at the county's restitution center in Union Gap where families and friends will go to "meet" with inmates, who will attend a similar cubicle at the jail.

Jails across the country have used video links for brief courtroom hearings for many years. Conducting court appearances by video eliminates the need to transport and secure inmates between jail and courthouse, which also reduces the drain on manpower and enhances safety at both the courthouse and the jail.

Secure visitation via a glass partition and telephone receiver prevents the passing of contraband, but still require moving the inmate from his cell to the visiting room. Escorting prisoners ties up staff and provides an opportunity for inmates normally segregated from one another to commit assaults. With a video visitation system, the inmate need be brought only as far as the nearest cubicle, and the visitor doesn't need to come to the institution at all.

You can expect to see more use of this technology in the future. Where the early court video systems required stringing coaxial cable and installing relatively costly cameras and microphones, new installations need be no more complex than a desktop computer with a webcam.

To Jam or Not to Jam

Without doubt, the battle royal of the day is between cell phone users and service providers and the forces that seek to make the phones inoperable. Cell phones have been characterized as possibly the most dangerous weapon an inmate can have inside prison walls. With a cell phone, an inmate can coordinate a prison or outside street gang, make threats against witnesses, arrange for contraband to be smuggled in, and do almost anything he could do if he wasn't inside.

Texas inmate Richard Tabler made his point when he called Texas state Sen. John Whitmire to complain about the way he was being treated. Whitmire leads a criminal justice committee in the Texas legislature. During the call, Tabler made Senator Whitmire aware he knew the names, ages, and residences of his children, just in case the legislator wasn't taking him seriously. The inmate didn't think he would have an opportunity to meet with the senator personally-he is a convicted murderer on .

Each generation of cell phones gets smaller. That makes them that much easier to smuggle inside. Many institutions have copies of x-ray films that attest to the determination of inmates and visitors who have concealed cell phones inside body cavities by "kiestering," and there is always the possibility of getting one through by hiding it inside a boot, a book, a food package, or some other common camouflage.

There is also the unfortunate likelihood of identifying a staff member who can be persuaded to bring one or more phones into the facility, since the commission for this can be into the thousands of dollars. Some inmates have cell phones solely for rent to other inmates-they don't use the phones themselves. More than 4,000 cell phones were confiscated inside California prisons during the first nine months of 2009.

Methods used to locate and identify other types of contraband can work with cell phones, but they tend to be expensive and not always available. There are dogs trained to find cell phones, but it's expensive to purchase and train a dog, and governments aren't exactly flush with cash these days. Cell searches are time- and personnel-intensive, and inmates are very good at finding new hiding places.

One highly controversial solution is cell phone jamming. The fundamental technology is nothing new, having been around as long as military forces have used wireless communications. A jammer transmits a signal on the same frequency or frequencies as used by the radio to be jammed. So long as the jammer signal is stronger than that of the radio, the radio signal will be overwhelmed and unable to communicate with its intended receiver.

In order to jam all types of phones capable of communication around an institution, a jammer needs to transmit on multiple frequencies at once. This is also relatively simple technology. Cell phone jammers interfere with the downlink signal from the cell phone tower. The user perceives the jamming signal as a dead zone, with his phone showing a "no signal" message.

The advanced technology comes in limiting the jamming signal to the area where you want to deny callers the use of their phones. Radio energy doesn't propagate to the limit you want and stop. It maintains enough strength for a clear signal to a predictable distance, then fades out as that distance increases, or it encounters an obstruction capable of blocking or absorbing it. Vendors of jamming equipment insist they can tailor the jamming very precisely to the areas intended.

Prisons are anxious to deploy jamming equipment, but the FCC won't let them. The 1934 Federal Communications Act made it a criminal offense to interfere with any licensed wireless transmission, and the cell phone companies hold the licenses. S. 251, the Safe Prisons Communications Act of 2009, would enable the governor of each state to petition the FCC to allow jamming of cell phone signals within a prison. This bill has passed the senate by unanimous vote and at presstime was in the House of Representatives, where H.R. 560 of the same name has 50 co-sponsors and is in committee.

Anti-jamming advocates insist the jamming signals will expand past the desired limits and deny service to lawful users who happen to be nearby, or are far away but in the range of an unobstructed signal. Also a matter of concern is the opportunity for this technology to infiltrate into the regular community, once Pandora's Box is open. Theaters, auditoriums, and churches urge those in attendance to turn off their cell phones, but many do not. Hotels would prefer their guests use their room phones for calls, so they can collect the significant surcharge they impose. Would they "encourage" this by making cell phone calls more difficult to complete?

Another aspect of the jamming debate comes from those who believe cell phone detection is a better way to go. Some federal prisons use an ITT product called Cell Hound to notify staff when cell phones are in use, and to pinpoint their location. This gives staff the opportunity to locate the phone and whoever is using it. By identifying the phone, investigators can then determine who is calling or being called, and when. They can also get the cell service provider for that phone to shut it down, making it useless.

This could provide an important source of intelligence, but it's an imperfect solution. Walls, bars, and even furniture can distort the signal path, distorting the location data. And cell phone providers, as most of us have come to know, are not always quick to act when customers or anyone else makes requests of them.

Signal detection works only when the cell phone is broadcasting. The signal is cut by turning the phone off or removing the battery. A GSM phone excluded from the network can be revived by inserting a new SIM card, which is the size of a postage stamp.

No one knows whether jamming, detection, or better methods of screening out contraband will work best to defeat inmate cell phone use. Whichever method we use, it's a matter of time before inmate ingenuity produces a new way to evade the rules and frustrate correctional staff.

SOLANO COUNTY, CA (KGO) -- Cell phones are becoming an increasingly serious problem in prisons. Last year, thousands were confiscated at prisons across California. Now, correctional guards have a new weapon that can literally snuff them out.

Drako is a one-and-a-half-year-old Belgian Malinois. During a recent training session at Solano State Prison, he sniffed out a smuggled cell phone in a desk drawer. Sgt. Wayne Conrad heads the canine unit there.

"If it's there, the dog's going to find it," he told ABC7.

Drako is one of two cell phone-sniffing dogs in the California Penal System. The pilot program is being run at the medium-security prison in Vacaville. Last year, more than 800 cell phones were smuggled inside. Prisoners use them to plan escapes, order gang hits and conduct drug deals.

"It's a problem where safety is an issue. Security is an issue," explained Solano State Prison spokesperson Lt. Cicely Burnett. "They've hidden them in body cavities. They're hidden in just, property that comes in."

They have even been hidden in cakes and pies which relatives and friends bring in during family visits. Their creativity is seemingly endless. But now, the dogs are able to do what staff could not.

Sgt. Conrad says cell phones have an odor that is different from other electronic equipment.

"To tell you the truth, what exactly it is, I couldn't tell you," he told ABC7. "All I can tell you is its different."

Whatever the odor is, it takes about eight weeks to train a dog to detect that unique smell. Drako has been trained to associate his favorite toy with the odor of cell phones. He knows he will get his toy once he sniffs one out.

"Show it to me. Show it to me," Sgt. Conrad told the dog during a recent training.

Drako zeroed in on a printer and began scratching.

"In the dog's mind, I find the odor, I scratch. What I'll do, is from behind the dog, I'll take his toy and I'll throw it right at his nose," Sgt. Conrad explains. "That toy's going to pop up whenever he's scratching."

Sure enough, Drako found the illegal phone and was a happy dog after being rewarded his toy to play with. On days when Drako does not find any cell phones, his trainer plants one at the end of the search for him to find.

"It's important he's always successful," Conrad says. "That's how it works."

There is one prison where cell phones are not a problem, San Quentin. The reason is poor signal. In a manner of speaking, inmates have a hard time getting out.

Florida Prisons Fight to Keep Cell Phones Out of Prison Cells

Those who attempt to smuggle cell phones into Florida prisons could end up spending up to five years in one under a new law enacted October 1, 2008 making the introduction of cell phones into prison a third degree felony.

Razor, Florida DC's first cell phone detecting dog.

On Tuesday, October 7 at 9:30 a.m. at Broward Correctional Institution (CI), Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil will speak about the implementation of the new legislation that takes aim at those smuggling a cell phone, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), Blackberries and similar devices into prisons statewide. News media are also invited to view a canine drug and cell phone detection demonstration. Debuting during the demonstration will be canine RAZOR, the first cell phone detection dog to work in Florida prisons. RAZOR is taking a break in her eight week training to demonstrate her skills thus far.

“Cell phones in prison pose a significant threat to prison security, because they are used by inmates to coordinate escape attempts, intimidate witnesses, introduce contraband like drugs and weapons into the prison and engage in numerous other illegal activities,” said Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil. “This legislation is a good first step in reducing those problems within our institutions.”

Inmates hide cell phones in shower shoes (above), bars of soap, behind cell plumbing, etc.

In FY 2007-08, 336 cell phones were confiscated from Florida’s prison population. As cell phone technology improves and they become smaller and easier to hide, the problem has become a prison security concern nationwide.

Prisoners, meet the body orifice security scanner

Acronyms are fun. In light of that fact, I’m pleased and honored to tell you about the BOSS. It stands for body orifice security scanner. It’s an almost-$13,000 security chair being tested in UK prisons to deter the smuggling of cell phones.

We’ve all watched prison shows and we’re all well aware that small items can be stashed in places that are normally used most frequently after the first half-sip of coffee in the morning but I had no idea that you could fit an entire cell phone up there.

I’d assume that the phones are small, like maybe the Samsung Juke or the Samsung Beat but who knows, maybe some of the heftier individuals could smuggle in an iPhone or two. At any rate, that’s hopefully all going to come to an end (no pun intended), at least until enterprising prisoners find a way to beat the system.

The BOSS is "a mobile chair with three sensitive sensors which can detect metal items as small as a pin or paper clip when they are hidden on or inside an individual." There are two of these chairs currently in use and they’ve detected 21 phones since last April. Apparently phones are used in prison for drug-running and across England, about 400 phones per month are seized by prison officials. iNAC Managed Access

Precision Control of Wireless Communications in Secured Areas

The Intelligent Network Access Controller (iNAC) forms a radio frequency umbrella around a precisely defined target area and intercepts cellular devices within range. This managed access solution provides the system operator with the capability to selectively permit or deny communications from these cellular devices based on a rich policy engine, including allowing 911 calls from even unauthorized devices. This technology does not require changes to existing law in order to be operated.

Advantages of iNAC

Assurance that unwanted communications are being disrupted before they can occur Avoidance of resource-intensive measures to manually locate and retrieve devices Addressing not only cell phones, but subscriber identity module (SIM) cards which store contact lists and account plans, are as small as postage stamps and easily concealable, and can be transferred from one phone to another so that inmates can continue to place calls Availability of device and call information for forensic analysis consistent with applicable law A range of funding options to accelerate deployments and prevent further threat to the community at large iNAC for Corrections Facilities

Corrections institutions worldwide have been grappling with the pervasive and increasing threat to public security from prison inmates using contraband cell phones behind bars. Tens of thousands of cell phones have been confiscated across the U.S. in each of the past several years, yet the number continues to grow by as much as 70 percent annually . Corrections officials and governors have sought help from the federal government in the form of jamming, which continues to be illegal in the U.S. and disrupts necessary communications such as 911 emergency calls.

In deployments and demonstrations in separate regions of the U.S., iNAC systems have registered hundreds of call and message attempts per hour on average , with contraband devices being denied while authorized devices are simultaneously permitted to complete calls.

The iNAC Managed Access system (also referred to as Inmate Call Capture system) has received industry support including from the FCC, CTIA, the top four U.S. commercial mobile operators, and other carriers whose networks cover corrections facilities. With this important backing, Tecore has been actively working with correctional institutions to plan and deploy systems.

Managed Access

Disrupts unwanted communications before they can occur Allows authorized and emergency calls Operates within bounds of existing laws Does not require personnel to retrieve devices to terminate communication Addresses not only cell phones, but SIM cards as well Device and call information is available for forensic analysis System has few physical points of presence, isolated from security risks

Cell Detection Jamming

Passively provides location of Disrupts communication by devices based on emitted radio emitting noise in cellular signal frequency bands Requires personnel to retrieve Does not differentiate - devices in order to terminate legitimate and emergency communication communications also prevented Transceivers often placed in plain Illegal under the Federal view of inmates, creating a security Communications Act risk

How smuggled mobile phones are used by prisoners to commit from their cells

The most valuable commodity inside Britain's prisons is now the . Smuggled inside books, milk cartons and shoes, they are used to organise drug deals, plot assassinations and intimidate victims via Facebook

Over the past five years mobile phones have become by far the hottest commodity behind bars

George Moon sat back on his bed, made himself as comfortable as he could on the thin mattress and flipped open his dog-eared address book. The 62-year-old career criminal slowly ran a finger down the long list of numbers - each belonging to other members of his gang - before finding the one he wanted. He then dialled.

It took only a few seconds for the call to connect and then, keeping his voice low so as not to be overheard, Moon went into business mode. This call, like most of the others he made each day, was to a number in Panama where his colleague, Leo Morgan, had established strong links with a local cocaine cartel. Thanks to this well-placed connection, Moon was able to buy virtually pure cocaine at bargain-basement prices.

The operation itself was relatively modest - half a kilo or so at a time - but in the space of eight months Moon had already earned more than £300,000. What made the enterprise truly remarkable was that Moon was running the whole thing from his at HMP Lindholme in Doncaster. Morgan was also behind bars, doing ten years for drug offences in the Central American republic's notoriously tough El Renacer prison in Gamboa, about 20 miles from Panama City.

Moon had already been jailed three times for drugs offences and was in Lindholme, a medium-security prison, serving a 14-year term imposed in 2003. Thanks to a smuggled mobile phone, he soon discovered that being in prison was no longer a bar to continuing his criminal ways. With his cell door closed and prison guards none the wiser, Moon would spend hours on the phone each day to Morgan, originally from Birmingham, who had also smuggled a phone into his cell.

Together the pair arranged the importation of 12 half-kilo packages of cocaine from Panama and Venezuela to Britain and Ireland. Morgan placed orders with a local drugs cartel. The drugs were then hidden among engineering parts and sent to Ireland by couriers including Royal Mail Parcel Force, DHL and TNT, none of whom had any idea of the true contents.

The 1,800 mobile phones confiscated since 2006 at the state prison in Vacaville, California

Using a fake name, Moon contacted a landlord in Cork, Ireland, arranged to rent storage space and persuaded him to accept deliveries. In order to make his cover story seem plausible, Moon invented three bogus firms - Ryan Pat Engineering, Angel Toys and FDFC Foods - to which the drugs shipments were sent, all of which he was able to arrange over the phone. He paid using credit card numbers belonging to friends on the outside.

Once in Ireland, the packages were collected by other members of the gang who brought them to mainland Britain by ferry and then distributed the cocaine among dealers in the northwest of England.

During the day, Moon kept the phone hidden in a space inside his mattress. In order to keep the battery topped up, he cleverly adapted his shaver - one of the few electrical items prisoners are allowed to keep in their cells - into a charging unit. He also used a notebook to store all the telephone numbers he needed, kept a spare SIM card to hand and carefully recorded the tracking numbers of the drug-filled packages being sent out.

An X-ray reveals a phone hidden within an inmate's body

His cunning scheme was eventually discovered after officials from the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) intercepted a parcel sent to Moon marked 'Legal Privilege Material'. Suspicious that the package was being sent rather than delivered by a solicitor and that it was stamped, not franked, it was opened and found to contain two

SIM cards and a quantity of heroin, which Moon had planned to sell inside the prison, all hidden between fake legal documents.

When police officers then raided his cell, they caught him red-handed. He was found sitting on his bed, speaking on his mobile with his address book in his hand. Originally due for release this year, George Moon will now remain in prison until at least 2019.

Over the past five years mobile phones have become by far the hottest commodity behind bars.

Statistics compiled by NOMS show that the authorities found 4,461 mobiles and 4,325 SIM cards in prisons in England and Wales between February 2009 and January this year. This is a four-fold increase on the number found three years earlier.

Prison Officers Association spokesman Glyn Travis believes the situation is rapidly getting out of control.

'We believe that, nationally, there is one phone, charger and SIM card for every ten prisoners, which is ridiculous,' he says.

Some experts believe the situation is far worse. Harry Fletcher, of the National Association of Probation Officers, calls the figure for phones found in the past 12 months 'implausible', claiming instead that the true number of phones is likely to be at least double that.

Justice minister Maria Eagle says, 'The figures understate the actual number of finds, because they don't include items retained by police for evidential purposes or not submitted for other reasons.'

In Ireland, the problem has reached epidemic proportions, with an estimated two phones for every three inmates at some jails.

Phones hidden in the soles of a pair of shoes

The phones get into the prisons through a variety of ingenious methods. Some are carried in underwear or hidden internally by visitors. Others have been baked into loaves of bread, hidden inside packets of washing powder, concealed inside the soles of shoes or inside books or legal papers. Many are thrown over prison walls so that inmates can pick them up during exercise periods. On one occasion, a phone was said to have been fired over a prison wall using a crossbow. In some cases friends of inmates use detailed satellite maps from the internet to work out the best place to throw the items so they won't be spotted by guards.

Earlier this year, milkman Paul Donachy was arrested for attempting to smuggle mobile phones into Perth prison. It is claimed he inserted waterproofed phones into cartons of milk, which he then resealed. The cartons were delivered directly to the prison kitchen, where inmates with trustee status would be able to retrieve them.

In January a haul of 13 mobiles, 24 SIM cards, several chargers and a quantity of drugs and alcohol were discovered hidden inside tins of baked beans and soup destined for HMP Frankland, the top-security prison that houses the Soham killer, Ian Huntley. The package was delivered in a sealed prison bag and made to look as if it belonged to an inmate who had been transferred from another institution.

Former Lisa Harris, who was jailed for smuggling phones to an inmate

Once inside, inmates hide the phones in their cells, often inside items of clothing, bedding or hollowed out electrical items. At HMP Verne in Dorset, two prisoners built matchstick models with special hidden compartments to store their phones. Inmates also attempt to hide phones by cutting out pages of thick books - most commonly Bibles or prayer books, in the hope that guards will not look at them to avoid causing offence.

As well as using the phones themselves, many inmates charge others to use them at an extortionate rate. It's a lucrative business. Sentencing a teenager who attempted to take a mobile phone into a youth centre last month, Judge Mark Rogers said, 'On the face of it, bringing a telephone into prison may seem relatively trivial, but they can often be regarded as a form of currency in prison.'

Inmates may simply want an easier way to contact their families, but former Bobby Cummines, who runs a charity offering support to ex-offenders, is concerned that this might not always be the case.

'What worries me is that some people want to get hold of phones for darker reasons. There are those who want to carry on committing , intimidate witnesses and even predatory paedophiles who might use phone and internet access to attempt to groom children while they are continuing to serve sentences.'

Last year, David Blakey, former Chief Constable of West Mercia Police, carried out a detailed study on the problem. 'The number of mobile phones circulating in prisons is astonishing... the cost of a mobile phone to a prisoner, I was repeatedly told, was from £250 to £800.

'Prisoners would rather have their own or a shared mobile phone. The reasons are apparent. Mobile phones can receive calls as well as making them, they cost less per call, they can be used at any time, they can take photographs and do other clever things. Prisoners also like mobile phones because they are not routinely monitored and so can be used for criminal purposes and in particular for drug trafficking.'

When low-level drug-dealer Jordan Moore found himself behind bars in Lewes prison he soon realised he had a captive market of addicts and quickly worked out a way to take control and cash in. Until his incarceration he had been part of a small but lucrative heroin and cocaine distribution ring based around the seaside town of Worthing. Once inside, he continued to run the business, issuing instructions to his foot soldiers by mobile phone, but he also expanded his operations to include the prison itself.

Packages of drugs were hidden in socks and thrown over the prison walls to be collected by inmates at prearranged times. With prices up to ten times higher behind bars than on the streets, Moore found his profits soaring and lavished gifts on his girlfriend, who was helping to look after his cash while he served his time.

Estimates from NOMS suggest drugs worth at least £100 million are being traded inside British prisons every year.

There is also a second prison black market in phones. What's being traded in this situation, however, is not the ability to make calls but rather the information contained on the SIM card and within the handset itself.

The most successful dealers have phones that receive orders for drugs on a near constant basis. It means the numbers themselves are incredibly valuable. New arrivals at prisons across the country sell their SIMs to those nearing release. Depending on the size of the customer network on offer, the cost of such an exchange can easily run to more than £10,000.

According to one inmate, who asked to remain anonymous, 'If you're a dealer, your mobile phone is the single most important thing you own.

'We're talking about a phone that rings constantly. Not so much during the week perhaps but night and day at the weekend. If you get nicked the first thing you need to do is make sure someone else takes over your customers. Think of it like buying a business franchise.'

Murphy, the UK's first mobile phone detector dog making a routine sweep in Norwich prison, Norfolk

Instead of making money, others use their smuggled mobiles for more menacing purposes. One seized phone contained, in the words of observers from an independent welfare organisation, 'the most graphic and violent images, including forced sex and stabbings'.

It's claimed there have been cases of camera phones being used to take photographs of prison officers so that those on the outside can target and intimidate them. Similarly, video phones are said to have been used to call relatives and show live footage of inmates being tortured in order to extort money or drugs.

Last year, gang leader Nigel Ramsey was jailed for organising, from his cell at HMP Wolds in Humberside, the cold- blooded murder of 17-year old Tarek Chaiboub. There have been at least three other cases of murders being arranged from prison cells in the past two years.

Now that an increasing number of mobile phones offer internet access, many prisoners are even able to update the pages of their social-networking sites while behind bars.

A new body-scanning chair that can detect mobile phones concealed inside body cavities

Last year, 21-year-old Kane Barratt, part of a gang jailed for leading a violent crime spree across Manchester, published photographs of himself in his cell on his Facebook page and posted a series of messages about his sentencing. One said: 'They can put me behind my door but they can't stop time.' Barratt also completed a quiz, had his fortune told and took an IQ test online.

With prison numbers at a record high, resources are being stretched thinner than ever before. Under rules introduced last year, anyone caught with a mobile phone inside a prison faces a two-year jail sentence, but the smuggling shows no signs of slowing down. Instead, the authorities are focusing attention on trying to detect smuggled mobiles and prevent them from being used.

In Norwich prison, staff have begun using Murphy, a springer spaniel that's been trained to sniff out phones. The dog is even able to detect devices hidden away in the human body or wrapped in plastic. After undergoing extensive tests with his handler, Mel Barker, Murphy's final task before starting work was to detect a SIM card located among 5,000 seats in a football stadium. Following Murphy's success, two further dogs are being trained by the prison service.

However, much of this good work is being undone by the fact that dozens of corrupt prison officers and support staff - many of them female - have been involved in smuggling phones to inmates. Earlier this year, prison officer Cara Wright was sacked after smuggling in a mobile phone for a killer serving time in Addiewell prison in Scotland. She was caught after the inmate, David Allan, could not resist bragging about what she had done for him.

In January Lisa Harris, a prison officer at Pentonville in north London, was jailed for smuggling two mobile phones to an inmate she had become attached to so that the pair could text and call one another even when she wasn't at work. At Long Lartin prison near Evesham, 29-year-old prison officer Lucy Reynolds was paid £600 by prisoners for smuggling drugs and mobile phones into the prison. Reynolds began her crime wave after a brief relationship with an inmate who was then moved off the wing where she worked. But other prisoners saw she was 'amenable to this sort of trafficking' and began ordering phones and SIM cards.

Eight staff at Wakefield prison, one of the country's top-security jails, have been suspended while authorities investigate allegations of phone smuggling. There are currently 19 former prison officers serving jail sentences for attempting to smuggle contraband.

The risks are high but with smuggled mobile phones offering so many potential benefits, it's little wonder that some inmates will go to extraordinary lengths to acquire one. When officers at Swaleside prison began a routine cell search

of one inmate, they couldn't help but notice how incredibly uncomfortable he seemed during the procedure. It turned out that he had attempted to hide a mobile phone and charger up his backside.

A phone hidden in a brush

In recent months, body orifice security scanner chairs, which can detect small metallic objects such as phones, knives and gun components without the need for intrusive strip searches, began to be rolled out through the prison system.

This month, Feltham jail in Middlesex and Brixton and Wandsworth prisons in London will begin trying out a hi-tech scheme designed to jam calls to and from mobile phones within the prison walls. The signal-blocking equipment has been installed at a cost of £2 million and if the trial goes well, the system is likely to be rolled out across every prison in the country.

A Prison Service spokesman said: 'We are currently trialling a range of signal denial technologies in a number of establishments. However, denying signals in prisons is not a quick, simple or cheap option. It is technically challenging, given the nature of the different fabric and layouts of prisons and the need to identify technology that is effective at denying signals within prisons without adversely affecting signals outside.'

One public-awareness group, the Wireless Association, says that in any case, jammers are not particularly precise, have a history of malfunctioning and that, in order to be truly effective, they have to also block frequencies used by emergency services, something that could have a devastating effect on public safety.

In the U.S., where jammers have also been introduced following an incident in which a man on death row used a smuggled mobile to call a senator and recite the names and addresses of the man's daughters, inmates have devised ways to shield their phones from jamming signals using sheets of tinfoil. Satellite phones, which are unaffected by traditional jammers and are now almost as small as regular mobiles, are also being used.

But even if prisoners are denied mobiles, they may still have other lines of communication open to them. According to Bill Hughes, director general of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, some inmates have been able to use gaming consoles to connect to the internet and then communicate with the outside world using chat rooms or online games.

'One of the issues if you are locked up is how you communicate,' says Hughes. 'What we've been highlighting is that it's not just about mobile phones. We've seen examples of people using PlayStations to pass messages.'

Harry Fletcher of NAPO, the probation officers' professional association, says a lasting solution has yet to be found: 'The Prison Service is unable to tackle the problem effectively because it simply doesn't know the true scale of it. Until they do, this problem won't go away.'

Despite Cell Phone Jamming, Killer Uses Facebook In Prison

No technology is perfect, and that includes cell phone jamming technology. The real issue here is how compromised is the wireless blocking system installed at Parchman to combat contraband cell phones? The meshDETECT secure cell phone service has no internet access available so prisoners cannot access Facebook or Twitter.

An inmate inside a Mid-South prison has been able to take pictures and post them online, despite a high-tech blocking technology put in place to keep him from doing just that.

Lois “Lee” Hudspeth is serving a life sentence for the brutal murder Jennifer Young. Hudspeth beat Young to death with a tire iron and dumped her body into a body of water at Askew Wildlife Refuge in Tunica County, Mississippi.

Young’s husband spoke to Action News 5 after his wife’s body was found in 2003. John Young said he barely recognized the mother of his young son.

“I didn’t even know who she was. Only by the markings on her body,” he said. I hope they catch this SOB who did this. I want them to catch him.”

Hudspeth was caught, and pleaded guilty to first degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison – cut off from the outside world. But now, he’s found freedom on Facebook, to dismay of Young’s sister-in-law, Deborah Russell.

“His attitude looks like he ain’t sorry. Looks like he’s enjoying life,” she said. “It’s said, because, I mean, he shouldn’t be able to do that.”

Russell can’t believe Hudspeth is able to access in his jail cell, posting pictures and playing internet games like Bingo Blitz and Farmville.

It’s not the first time Action News 5 has busted inmates posting on Facebook. Each time they were using an illegal cell phone that was smuggled inside their cells. And after each report, the phones were confiscated and the inmates punished – until this time.

The Mississippi Department of Corrections cannot say how Hudspeth managed to get photos of himself on Facebook. They’re likely at a loss because Hudspeth is at a prison with “cell blocking” technology.

It’s called “Operation Cellblock,” a hi-tech system that claims to “shut down illegal inmate cell phone usage.” The company, Tecore Networks, says the system puts a “radio frequency umbrella” over prisons which blocks un- authorized users but allows authorized users to still get out.

Hudspeth is locked up at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, where the MDOC launched the cell blocking system in September last year. Yet he uploaded a picture of himself in July, and played games on Facebook as recently as September.

Action News 5 asked a Tecore Networks spokesperson how Hudspeth could be on Facebook with operation cellblock in effect. The spokesperson said, “I have no idea, you have no idea, the prison has no idea. No one knows for sure until you can find out how this guy is doing it.”

Meanwhile, an MDOC spokesperson said Hudspeth’s Facebook activity is under investigation. Hudspeth actually has two accounts. If investigators determine he has or had a cell phone, they will take appropriate action.

Even if someone on the outside is helping Hudspeth with his Facebook account, he would still need a cell phone to text or that person the pictures from his jail cell photo shoot.

Prison officials say the illegal cell phone trade is appealing to visitors and staff because inmates can pay up to $500 for a phone. Dozens of prison staffers have been arrested over the past four years for supplying phones.

Since September of last year, more than one million cell phone calls or texts attempted by inmates at Parchman have been intercepted and successfully blocked by Tecore’s technology, which is provided at no cost as part of its contract with the Mississippi Department of Correction to provide phone service.

Related posts:

1. Another DOC Asks Facebook To Remove Inmate Pages The Washington State Department of corrections has asked Facebook to remove inmate Facebook pages. It joins California in trying to stop the social media activity... 2. Facebook Foils Jailbirds Carrying On With Crime On Their Cell Phones One of the main problems with contraband cell phones smuggled into prisons is the use of the internet via these wireless devices. Detainees then use... 3. Baja Prison Installs Jamming Technology To Block Inmates’ Cell Phones The Baja State Public Safety Secreriat announced Thursday the installation of technology at one of the main Jails in Tijuana that will inhibit inmate’s from... 4. Contraband Cell Phones And Prisoner Call Demand Here are two great insights into the demand for contraband prison cell phones and the desire for communication via telephone service in general in the... 5. No Single Solution To Illegal Cell Phones In Prison The following editorial is a response to one written earlier regarding contraband prison cell phone signal jamming. In it the author, an official of the...

If you think the cell phone explosion of recent years has somehow been kept at bay by prison walls, you would be greatly mistaken. Technology, like water, permeates every crack. Today on Lockdown, we're talking phones in jail.

In prison, a cellphone is an extremely coveted item—one that easily fetches hundreds of dollars on the black market. Not surprisingly, prisoners go to great lengths to get them. Lengths that might make a normal person throw up. Warning: This is rough stuff.

When we asked Sergeant Don McGraw how cell phones make their way into San Quentin, he turned to Sam Robinson, our CDC liaison and asked, "How deep do you want me to go with this?" Sam replied, "As deep as you want to go." We knew we were in for something special.

Of all the shocking things we saw that day, perhaps the most shocking was a Samsung Captivate. It has a 4-inch screen. It's 4.78 inches long, 2 and a half inches wide, and almost half an inch thick. And it was up somebody's ass. Yes, an iPhone up the ass is bad, as is the BlackBerry Storm you see there, but holy God the Captivate made my eyes cross just thinking about it. The bar of soap mentioned in the video was the kicker.

Smart phones are especially coveted in prison, not surprisingly. Aside from being able to more easily email, search the web and communicate, this is arguably the main way prisoners are getting their porn now. Porn, as you might imagine, is a very hot commodity in the big house.

Most of the phones that are discovered are of the pre-paid variety, which makes them extremely hard to trace. Most of the time, when phones are found they are locked and have had their SIM cards removed. In cases where they recover a phone with a SIM card they attempt to unlock it and scour it for data: phone numbers they called, text messages, , and any photos they may have taken.

Sergeant McGraw said that while other prisons have a much bigger problem with phones being brought in (especially prisons in more rural areas), he's noticed a huge jump at San Quentin just within the last year. He estimates that roughly 10-percent of the population in San Quentin have cell phones, which is a stark contradiction to the 1-percent estimate inmate Sam Johnson gave us just an hour earlier.

There are many different ways that phones come in. Officer Patao mentioned the inmate crews that work for Caltrans (the California Department of Transportation). The correctional officers have made it much more difficult for this to work by making sure that inmates have no idea where they'll be working on any given day. But if they are on a larger, week-long assignment in one area, it still happens. He also talked about drop points within the San Quentin grounds.

Drops can work in a number of ways. For example, there's a bathroom just outside one of the main San Quentin gates which is open to the public and is a big draw for tourists. Inmate work crews clean these bathrooms every day. An inmate's associate on the outside will have taped a package (of phones, drugs, tobacco, etc.) to the back of the women's toilet, for example. When the inmates come to clean, they toss it in with the rest of the trash, then sort through it later. Then, when when nobody's looking, whoop, up the butt it goes. They are usually prepackaged in latex gloves or condoms for easier insertion. Ow.

Another drop scenario: San Quentin backs up to a main road in San Rafael, with only a chain-link fence separating its grounds from civilization. This is the outside perimeter, not the security perimeter. Inmates' associates pull over to the side of the road at night and just throw over a distinctive bag such as one from McDonalds, or Burger King. When the work crew comes out in the morning to clean the grounds, they pick the bag up, hide it in the lawnmower bag and then get the contents later.

The last way stuff gets in, though nobody likes talking about it, is that people can be bribed. San Quentin has hundreds of volunteers who come in and out all the time. While the vast majority of them are on the level, there are always people willing to sneak something in for a price. This includes correctional officers as well, though prison officials like talking about that even less.

In all of these scenarios cell phones are used to coordinate these drops, which makes it even more critical for the officers to try to keep them out.

Phones go from $300 to $700. Most of the cash is handled outside of the institution. Usually someone on the street is responsible for smuggling in the phone, and then the inmate who received the phone will have a family member or associate on the outside pay him/her in cash or money order.

Once phones are within the system they are incredibly hard for the correctional officers to get a hold of. Officer Patao says, "It's harder for our institution because we dont' have the luxury of having cameras recording everything here, so we have to rely a lot on information we receive from our informants."

Sergeant McGraw agrees. "In a dorm setting, once our officers hit the yard, there are lookouts. In each unit there are five dorms—they're tipped off and the phones are gone before we can even enter the dorm. It's hard to track these phones down and get them while they're on them, and they're passed around so much."

Remote control helicopters deliver cell phones to inmates

Police in Brazil have foiled a plot to smuggle mobile phones into a high- security prison using a remotely-controlled model helicopter. The BBC reports.

Prisoners in Brazilian jails routinely use mobile phones to carry on with criminal activity, and the police say the ones they recovered were probably intended to go to gang leaders inside the jail.

It is not the first time that the authorities have foiled an innovative attempt to smuggle material into a jail in Brazil.

Earlier this year Sao Paulo state prison guards uncovered a plot using pigeons to carry mobile phone parts over the walls of a jail.

The prison disconnect; contraband cell phones

Inmates in the Carandiru Prison, Latin America's largest, use a celular phone during a 2001 rebellion in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The uprising was part of a state-wide of about 20,000 inmates in 29 jails. Sixteen prisoners were killed and and 8,000 others taken during the rebellion which authorities said was coordinated by pre-paid

SAN FRANCISCO — Technology waits for no one, a fact cell phones smuggled into jails. (AP photo) that prison officials have recently discovered. Thanks to corrupt prison workers and visitors, California prisoners have access to thousands of cellular telephones - which they could use to prepare for escapes or organize crimes on the outside. Officials confiscated nearly 3,000 cell phones last year alone.

Until now, prisons could only levy administrative penalties against anyone caught smuggling in a cell phone - a revoked visiting privilege for a visitor here, a cancellation of "good behavior" for a prisoner there. Rogue staff members - responsible for more than half of the smuggled phones, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation - are fired when caught, but clearly the money on the table " you can sell a single cell phone for up to $1,000 to a prisoner," said Seth Unger, the department's press secretary is a stronger motivation. What's a prison to do?

Push for new laws, apparently. State Sen. John J. Benoit, R-Bermuda Dunes Riverside County, has a bill that will criminalize this behavior as a misdemeanor with a $5,000 fine. The bill, which is expected to pass, won't throw anyone new in jail - an important consideration, considering the overcrowded conditions of our state prisons - but it could extend prisoners' sentences or make them ineligible for parole.

It's an acceptable solution to a serious problem, but we'd much rather see the Legislature get more creative. There may be a simpler, cheaper, technological solution: Why not just block cell phone reception around prisons?

Prison Solves Problem of Contraband Cell Phones

This is one of the best articles I have seen that demonstrates the problem of contraband prison cell phones can be solved simply by providing prisoners access to telecommunications services in their prison cells.

In the case of this British jail, that access was provided via land-line phones. But wouldn’t a secure prison cell phone service be simpler and less expensive? In the case of this prison, the results of the in-cell telephony experiment were fewer smuggled phones, less violence, and even fewer failed drug tests!

Illegal mobile phones in jail are a challenging issue for the Prison Service. Thousands have been confiscated over recent years and thousands are still in daily use by prisoners. Tabloid newspapers tell us that the phones are used by criminals carrying on their business from inside. Why else would they need mobiles, they ask, when there are telephones on the landings of every jail in the country? But the headlines mask the truth.

Phones were installed on prison landings after the Lord Justice Woolf inquiry into the Strangeways prison riot in 1990. Before then, prisoners used to rely on letters; a slow method of communication for all, and impossible for thousands of illiterate prisoners. Woolf criticised the meagre contact between prisoners and their families, and recommended installing telephones on prison landings.

But getting access to a phone is not easy. Most prisoners can only call out during prisoner association periods. The times of these vary, but can be as little as one hour a day. This causes problems, and arguments and fights over calls are a regular occurrence.

Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners, published this from a prisoner at Risley jail, in Cheshire, who complained he was unable to call his seriously ill father every day: “There are four phones here on B wing, but only three work,” he wrote.

“Association is from 6pm to 7pm, but it is usually 6.15pm before we are unlocked. There are 120 inmates on this wing; if we had the full hour and everyone had 10 minutes on the phone, that would allow 18 prisoners to make calls.”

He went on: “Every act of violence I have witnessed here has been due to the phones, or lack of them. The situation is open to bullying and causes mental distress to those who can’t phone home.”

But there is a better way. At Lowdham Grange, a category-B prison in Nottingham, prisoners can make phone calls from landlines in their cells 24 hours a day. Prisoners there submit a list of numbers to be approved, then pay in advance for their calls, which can be monitored.

I ask one ex-offender just released from Lowdham Grange how many contraband mobiles were in the prison. “Very few,” he says, “they are not needed, when men can phone their families at any time day or night.” He admits to having used illicit mobiles in other jails, but only because the usual method of telephoning home was so restrictive.

But elsewhere, most prisoners resort to keeping an illicit mobile in their cell. Although some of these are smuggled in by prisoners, many are brought in by prison staff (there is a going rate for doing so).

One prisoner’s wife says her husband regularly calls her on a clandestine mobile. She works evenings, so is unable to talk to him through legal channels. She accepts he is breaking prison rules, but believes regular contact is important. “I like to keep him abreast of family life, involve him in decision making, it makes him feel part of the family he is away from,” she says. “But it would be nice to do it legitimately.”

Lowdham Grange is operated by Serco, which has also installed landlines in some cells at Dovegate prison, Staffordshire. Serco is so confident that they are not being abused that it plans to install phones in all five jails it operates in England.

“The introduction of in-cell telephony at Lowdham Grange was followed by significant improvements in prison security, including a marked reduction in attempts to smuggle mobile phones into the establishment,” says Vicky O’Dea, prisons operations director at Serco. “The number of prisoners failing random mandatory drug tests also fell following the introduction of the scheme.”

She says the phones have made the prison safer. “Prisoner safety improved – there were fewer assaults, less bullying and fewer incidents of self-harm. Prisoners could make phone calls in more decent conditions, and the frequency and quality of contact with their families increased. Maintaining family contact is a proven factor in reducing the likelihood that prisoners will reoffend; consequently, introducing the phones led to an improvement in rehabilitation.”

For now, state-run prisons have been reluctant to adopt the same stance. The prison service says it is “exploring the possibilities of a pilot installation [of in-cell phones] in a state-run establishment, as we recognise the advantages and benefits of such a system”.

FCC Takes Up Technology Solutions To Contraband Cell Phones

The FCC today issued FCC 13-58, Contraband Wireless Device Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), to “remove barriers to the deployment and viability of existing and future technologies used to combat contraband wireless devices.” The NPRM discusses current technologies such as managed access, detection, jamming and wireless carrier service termination of identified contraband cell phones.

Below are excerpts from the rulemaking document:

Inmate use of contraband wireless devices has grown within the federal and state prison systems parallel to the growth of wireless device use by the general public. In federal institutions and prison camps, GAO reports that the number of cell phones confiscated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) grew from 1,774 in 2008 to 3,684 in 2010. While not all states track or report data on the use of contraband wireless devices, the data that has been reported demonstrates significant growth. For example, California correctional officers seized approximately 261 cell phones in 2006; by 2011, correctional officers discovered more than 15,000 contraband wireless devices. Further, a test of an interdiction technology in two California State prisons detected more than 25,000 unauthorized communication attempts over an 11 day period in 2011. A similar interdiction system permanently installed in a Mississippi correctional facility reportedly blocked 325,000 communications attempts in the first month of operation, and as of February 2012, had blocked more than 2 million communications attempts.

In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Notice), we take steps to facilitate the development of multiple technological solutions to combat the use of contraband wireless devices in correctional facilities nationwide. Prisoners’ use of contraband wireless devices to engage in criminal activity is a serious threat to the safety of prison employees, other prisoners, and the general public. Through this Notice, we seek to remove barriers to the deployment and viability of existing and future technologies used to combat contraband wireless devices. In this Notice, “contraband wireless device” refers to any wireless device, including the physical hardware or part of a device – such as a subscriber identification module (SIM) – that is used within a correctional facility without authorization by the correctional authority. We use the phrase “correctional facility” to refer to any facility operated or overseen by federal, state, or local authorities that houses or holds prisoners for any period of time.

We propose a series of modifications to the Commission’s rules to facilitate spectrum lease agreements between wireless providers and providers or operators of managed access systems used to combat contraband wireless devices. Those proposed modifications are:

• Revising the Commission’s rules to immediately process de facto lease agreements or spectrum manager lease agreements for spectrum used exclusively in managed access systems in correctional facilities, and streamlining other aspects of the lease application or notification review process for those managed access systems in correctional facilities.

• Forbearing, to the extent necessary, from the individualized application review and public notice requirements of Sections 308, 309, and 310(d) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the Act), for qualifying managed access leases. • Establishing a presumption that managed access operators provide a private mobile radio service (PMRS), streamlining the process for seeking Special Temporary Authority (STA) to operate a managed access system, and seeking comment on whether to establish a requirement that managed access providers provide notice to nearby households and businesses prior to activation of a managed access system. • We also propose to require wireless providers to terminate service, if technically feasible, to a contraband wireless device if an authorized correctional facility official notifies the wireless provider of the presence of the contraband wireless device within the correctional facility. We seek comment on the elements of the proposed notification and termination process, including who should be authorized to transmit a termination notification to the wireless provider, the form of such termination notice, and any safeguards necessary to ensure that service to legitimate wireless devices is not inadvertently terminated. We seek comment on the implication of our proposals on detection and managed access system operators’ compliance with or liability under Section 705 of the Act and federal law governing the use of pen registers or trap and trace devices. Finally, while we are limiting our proposals to managed access and detection solutions, we nevertheless invite comment on other technological approaches for addressing the problem of contraband wireless device usage in correctional facilities.

Further on in the document, it discusses managed access systems and some of the current deployments in state prison systems:

Managed access systems are micro-cellular, private networks that analyze transmissions to and from wireless devices to determine whether the device is authorized or unauthorized for purposes of accessing public carrier networks. Managed access systems utilize base stations that are optimized to capture all voice, text, and data communications within the system coverage area, which would be a correctional facility in the instant case. When a wireless device attempts to connect to the network from within the coverage area of the managed access system, the system cross- checks the identifying information of the device against a database that lists wireless devices authorized to operate in the coverage area. Authorized devices are allowed to communicate normally (i.e., transmit and receive voice, text, and data) with the commercial wireless network, while transmissions to or from unauthorized devices are terminated. The managed access system may also provide an alert to the user notifying the user that the device is unauthorized. The systems provide operational flexibility to the correctional facility administrators by allowing them to disable devices without having to physically remove them.

A correctional facility or third party at a correctional facility may operate a managed access system if authorized by the Commission. This authorization has to date involved agreements with the wireless providers serving the geographic area including the correctional facility and lease applications approved by the Commission. A number of deployments and trials have been conducted or are ongoing, as listed below.

• California The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has conducted trials of managed access systems at two state prisons. Based on the results of the trials, the California Technology Agency issued an Invitation for Bids for a prime contractor to provide a pay telephone system for inmates and wards and a managed access systems in correctional facilities across the state. The CDCR awarded the contract in April 2012 to Global Tel*Link (GTL), and its managed access operator has received experimental authorization to test a managed access system in nine facilities. • Maryland The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) conducted an in- depth analysis of contraband cell phone interdiction technologies in 2009. Maryland DPSCS conducted trials of various non-jamming technologies at a decommissioned correctional facility in Jessup, Maryland, and a real-world study of non-jamming technologies in three commissioned correctional facilities. Maryland DPSCS subsequently issued a Request for Proposals for the installation of managed access and detection systems in all of its prisons, and granted a contract to Tecore Networks (Tecore) to install a managed access system in the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore City, Maryland. • Mississippi In 2010, the Mississippi Department of Corrections deployed a managed access system at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison in Parchman, Mississippi. In its first month of

operation, the system blocked a total of 325,000 call and message attempts, and has prevented more than 2 million calls and text messages through February 2012. • South Carolina South Carolina has conducted trials of a managed access system at its Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, South Carolina. The Commission has approved several spectrum leases sought by ShawnTech Communications (ShawnTech) for a permanent installation at the Lieber Correctional Institution, and the system is operational. • Texas The Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced in late 2012 that it would install managed access systems in two state correctional facilities. The Commission has approved a number of spectrum leases for ShawnTech for the managed access installations.

Prisons to be given mobile phone jamming devices

Prisons are to be given gadgets that block mobile phone signals in order to stop inmates committing more crimes while behind bars.

A handheld mobile phone jammer.

The Ministry of Justice says that handsets smuggled into jails are being used by offenders to harass victims, organise gangs and deal drugs on the outside.

It has already carried out trials of jamming equipment, which is illegal if used in public, and is about to give portable devices to some prison governors.

And next week the Government will back a Bill proposed by a Conservative MP that would allow the authorities to track mobile calls attempted by criminals as well as stop them getting through to their associates.

It follows a series of reports by officials and experts warning that phones are being used to plan crimes and smuggle drugs into prisons.

“The presence of wireless telegraphy devices, in particular, illicit mobile telephones, presents serious risks to the security of prisons and the other institutions to which the Bill applies, as well as to the safety of the public,” according to notes on the new draft law written by the Ministry of Justice.

“Mobile telephones are used for a range of criminal purposes in these institutions, including commissioning serious violence, harassing victims and continuing involvement in extremist networks, organised crime and gang activity. Access to mobile telephones is also strongly associated with drug supply, violence and bullying.”

It is already against the law to take mobile phones into prisons or young offender institutions or to use them within their walls, but they still find their way in thanks to inmates, their visitors and corrupt staff.

Recent figures show that 40 mobiles were found at one prison, HMP Wakefield, in just nine months, when staff and visitors were searched at the gates. Many of the SIM cards were taken out and sent to a central unit to be analysed.

The MoJ confirmed in a Parliamentary written answer this week that it has already “trialled mobile signal denial technology” in a small number of prisons. The equipment works by transmitting radio waves at the same frequency used by phones, preventing signals reaching the nearest transmission mast.

“These trials have demonstrated that equipment can be capable of denying signals to illicit mobile phones within the prison perimeter as required by law and Ofcom regulations, but that this is not a quick, simple or cheap solution,” said Crispin Blunt, the prisons minister. One expert claimed it would cost £250,000 to block signals at a single jail.

The minister added that “a number of short range portable mobile phone blocking devices” have also been purchased.

Also this week Sir Paul Beresford, the Tory MP for Mole Valley, tabled his Private Member’s Bill that would expand the use of technology to combat mobile use behind bars.

His Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill, to be debated in the Commons next Friday, will allow ministers to let prison governors “interfere with wireless telegraphy” in order to prevent the use of mobile phones, and also to “investigate the use of such devices”.

“The provisions of the Bill are designed to create a clear and transparent legal basis on which signal interference equipment can be used within relevant institutions to enable the authorities to find mobile telephones and to disrupt, by means of signal interference equipment, the use of those telephones that cannot be found,” according to the MoJ’s note on the Bill.

Sir Paul told a local newspaper he was inspired to draft the Bill after seeing a mobile phone jammer used in a noisy train carriage.

“I was sitting on the train on the way home and several people were making pointless and annoying calls in loud voices,” he said.

“Things like 'hi mum, I'm on the train, I was on the same train yesterday, what's for dinner?'

“These calls were driving a number of us up the wall and a guy got this little thing out and flicked a switch and stopped all the conversations. It is illegal but it was very funny.”

Ofcom, the communications industry regulator, said it believed prisons could use mobile jammers within their walls because they are Crown property.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "Illicit mobile phone possession in prison is a very serious offence and is dealt with appropriately.

"This bill will grant new powers to prison authorities so that they can block mobile phone signals within the prison walls.

"Technology to locate smuggled mobile devices or render them useless is improving and will play an increasing role in tackling this illegal activity in the future."

Cellphone sniffer hunts down illicit prison calls

Contraband cellphones are a massive problem in prisons – now there’s a way to see who’s using one

SHOT six times in a "hit" allegedly planned by prisoners, Robert Johnson knew just who to blame: the cellphone service providers that failed to block calls made inside the jail. Last week, he announced that he plans to sue 20 of these companies.

Yet it is virtually impossible to stop cellphones being used inside prisons, often for criminal purposes. But a way of pinpointing exactly where a call is coming from could help clamp down on the practice.

Johnson, a guard at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, was in charge of efforts to keep contraband out of the facility. He was shot at his home in March 2010, and believes the attack was organised by a prisoner. He says that had local mobile networks chosen to, they could have jammed calls from inside the jail. He is seeking unspecified damages in a case his attorney hopes will push networks to deal with the problem of illicit cellphone use in prison.

But it's a tough problem to crack, because at the moment there is no way of blocking individual signals. The only option is to jam all signals at one cellphone tower, which would also disrupt calls between guards and by people living in the neighbourhood – including those to the emergency services. Setting up dedicated cellphone towers for the sole use of prison staff is an option but they are expensive– costing more than $1 million per prison.

And people will always find ways to get phones into prisons, for example, by smuggling them hidden in body cavities, or by bribing corrupt officials.

A team at Intelligent Automation Inc (IAI) of Rockville, Maryland, has now found a way to pinpoint the prison cell that a call is coming from. This has not been done before, says IAI engineer Benjamin Lonske, because the signals in a prison wing are just too messy to analyse. "Inside, there are a lot of radio waves from phones bouncing off the cell doors, walls and stairs," he says. This foils attempts to triangulate the source of the signal.

IAI's answer is simple: analyse the phone signals from immediately outside the prison walls instead – where the signals are unaffected by radio echoes.

By installing four 5-centimetre antennas at the corners of the building of interest, IAI has managed to locate a phone in use to within 50 centimetres, the team says.

The antennas are connected to a customised signal processing computer that measures the time it takes for a digital phone signal to reach each antenna. The sub-nanosecond differences allow the to triangulate, from the best three signals, which cell the phone is in. You can then send in guards with sniffer dogs to search for it.

"We can detect phone activity, whether it is voice, text or data, in the monitored area, and map the cellphone location," says Eric van Doorn of IAI. The research was funded by the US government's National Institute of Justice.

The system currently works for the communication technology standard used by most cellphones in the US. IAI is working on modifying it to cater for other popular formats that use different digital coding and frequency bands.

Full field tests at a state prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, are set for later this year, van Doorn says.

Prisons system tries new method to stop contraband cell phones

State corrections officials say they have come up with a no-cost plan to stop the illegal use of cell phones inside prisons by inmates, a problem that has plagued the prison system for years.

Corrections officials announced today that Global Tel Link has been awarded a contract for inmates to use the company's service to make calls from each prison's authorized telephone system.

The company will receive revenues from those phone calls and will use the proceeds of that deal to install systems to block unauthorized cell signals at prisons, including phone calls, text messages, emails and attempts to access the Internet.

The system was tested last year at two prisons over an 11-day period for about eight hours a day, officials said, and blocked more than 25,000 unauthorized cell signals.

The use of contraband cell phones by inmates has exploded in recent years. Officials say that they confiscated 1,400 phones in 2007, and that last year that number had grown to more than 15,000 phones

So far this year they have found 2,181 contraband phones, with inmates using smart phones to contact people outside prisons, communicate with other inmates or set up Facebook pages.

The phones are smuggled into the prisons in a variety of ways, including by staffers or contractors who sell them for thousands of dollars or by visitors who leave them on prison grounds where inmates working outside may retrieve them.

The first system is expected to be in place by the end of the year.

"Inmates have used cell phones to commit more crimes, organize assaults on staff and terrorize victims," Matthew Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in a prepared statement.

The new technology "will enable CDCR

More on Murphy, first sniffer dog able to detect cell phones

More on the UK's first cell phone sniffing dog , from Wisbech Standard.

"Murphy, a 20 month-old English Springer Spaniel, is undergoing the last stages of his training in prisons across the East of England . He has been trained to recognise the distinctive smell of phone handsets.

Phil Bowyer, of Orchard Leys, and a colleague, Mel Barker, have helped to train the only sniffer dog in the UK that is capable of identifying the scent given off by mobile phones .

Mr Bowyer, area drug dog co-ordinator for the prison service eastern area, said: "In order to disrupt the supply of illicit drugs and contraband entering our prisons the Prison Service is determined to develop new methods of detecting mobile phones.

"These new methods include the most up-to-date electronic mobile phone detectors together with the implementation of a research and development program to use 'sniffer dogs' to detect mobile phones."

Mr Bowyer added: "His training to date has been very successful, and he has been able to correctly identify mobile phones. The prison service will be monitoring Murphy's success with a view to introducing similar dogs in other jails."

Jail dog sniffs out illicit phones

Phones smuggled into jails is a problem worldwide - this blog has an entire chapter devoted to Inmates and cell phones stories - as thanks to cell phones, convicts are able to stay in touch with the outside world and continue business as usual, running rackets, directing drug cartels, even ordering executions from behind bars.

They are smuggled into jails in the most imaginative ways and have been found in toads, mayonnaise jars, in compost piles, a prisoner's bowels, the soles of their shoes, inside hollowed-out blocks of cheese, or alarmingly and more commonly, through a corrupt correctional officer.

Now, it seems the UK may have come up with the perfect solution for detecting them. A sniffer dog , according to The Times..

A sniffer dog has become the first in Britain to be trained to search out mobile phones in jails. Murphy, a 15-month- old English springer spaniel, undertook his first trial at Norwich prison yesterday .

According to the BBC , Mel Barker, the dog trainer at Norwich Prison, said: "Every mobile phone has a scent which is unique to mobile phones. .

Remote control helicopters deliver cell phones to inmates

Police in Brazil have foiled a plot to smuggle mobile phones into a high- security prison using a remotely-controlled model helicopter. The BBC reports.

Prisoners in Brazilian jails routinely use mobile phones to carry on with criminal activity, and the police say the ones they recovered were probably intended to go to gang leaders inside the jail.

It is not the first time that the authorities have foiled an innovative attempt to smuggle material into a jail in Brazil.

Earlier this year Sao Paulo state prison guards uncovered a plot using pigeons to carry mobile phone parts over the walls of a jail.

Toy chopper crashes in bid to drop phones off to jail

RATCHABURI : When it comes to finding ways to get in touch with the outside world, the convicts at Khao Bin central prison are nothing if not creative. And now they're taking to the skies, using radio-controlled helicopters to smuggle in mobile phones.

SIM CRASH: Officers seize a radio-controlled helicopter carrying mobile phones and accessories thought to be destined for Khao Bin central prison in Ratchaburi.

Officials at the prison in Muang district discovered the new phone-smuggling method yesterday after they found a crashed toy helicopter about 500m outside the high-security prison.

Cell phone wristwatch confiscated in Solano prison

This cell phone wristwatch was among 1,800 phones confiscated at Solano prison in Vacaville between 2006 and 2009.

Why Sacramento can't get cell phones out of prison

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Lt. Robin Bond holds a cellphone wristwatch, one of over 1800 cellphones confiscated from prisoners since 2006, at the California State Prison Solano in Vacaville, Calif.,

California prisons confiscated more than 10,000 cell phones last year. This year, officials at Corcoran State Prison found a cell phone with a camera in possession of convicted serial killer Charles Manson. It was the second phone found on Manson in two years.

In 1996, four men gang-raped a 15-year-old girl. They were convicted. But in 2008, the ringleader called the victim from his prison cell. "To our horror," Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley said at a press conference Tuesday, "there was nothing we could do about that."

In dysfunctional California, it is not illegal to smuggle a cell phone into a state prison.

State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, introduced a bill to make smuggling cell phones to inmates a misdemeanor - and it passed last year. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it because it wasn't tough enough.

"Tell me how that makes sense," Ryan Sherman of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association asked. "At least then it was a misdemeanor."

This year, Padilla introduced SB26 to make smuggling a cell phone a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine per phone. The bill passed through the Senate Public Safety Committee Tuesday. But Padilla

had to remove a provision to add two to five years to the sentence of an inmate caught planning a crime with a smuggled phone.

You can thank the committee chairwoman, Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, for watering down the bill. As the Los Angeles Times reported, she didn't care about the list of crimes - including, murder, kidnapping and witness intimidation - directed by inmates via cell. She doesn't want to add to .

To fight the problem, the corrections department launched Operation Disconnect, which included unannounced inspections of prison staff. One such search at Avenal State Prison turned up 13 cell phones.

Avenal Public Information Officer E. J. Borla believes most phones find their way into the medium-security prison through visitors who find creative ways to smuggle contraband. Even if he's right, one rotten prison guard can do a lot of damage. In 2009, the state fired an officer who made $150,000 smuggling phones to convicts. Because he broke no law, he wasn't prosecuted.

The department has begun testing new phone signal-jamming technology, according to spokesman Paul Verke.

Why not search all the guards before they go to work? Here the prison guards' union is of little help. Officers are paid "walk time" while they suit up in steel-toed boots, utility belts and other gear. Going through a metal detector would cut into "walk time."

In that prison staff have the most to fear from well-connected convicts, couldn't the union give on it?

"Give on working for free?" union spokesman Sherman replies. After the furloughs, his people have given enough.

Police foil prison phone delivery

Police in Brazil have foiled a plot to smuggle mobile phones into a high- security prison using a remotely- controlled model helicopter. Four people were arrested and the high-tech toy was recovered after police stopped a car near to the jail.

Mobile phones are widely used by prisoners Police said the model helicopter was inside jails in Brazil to continue directing equipped with nine mobile phones criminal activities. Earlier this year prison guards in the same state discovered that pigeons were being used to carry mobile phone parts. It seems the plot to smuggle the mobile phones into the Presidente Venceslau high security jail in Sao Paulo state was only stymied when police stopped a car as part of a routine check. In the boot of the vehicle they found the one-metre long model helicopter with a basket- like container attached to its base. Inside were nine mobile phones wrapped in a disposable nappy, while another five

phones were also discovered in the vehicle. Four suspects were arrested, and the youngest, who was aged just 17, is reported to have confessed they had been given $5,000 to buy and prepare the helicopter. They were apparently to be paid the same amount if they had successfully landed the model inside the prison walls. Prisoners in Brazilian jails routinely use mobile phones to carry on with criminal activity, and the police say the ones they recovered were probably intended to go to gang leaders inside the jail. It is not the first time that the authorities have foiled an innovative attempt to smuggle material into a jail in Brazil. Earlier this year Sao Paulo state prison guards uncovered a plot using pigeons to carry mobile phone parts over the walls of a jail.

Cell Phones in Prison: A Former Inmate Explains the Real Deal

A former long-serving federal inmate living in South Florida says the real reason for the proliferation of cell phones in prisons has more to do with privately owned institutions gouging inmates and their families with ridiculously overpriced phone time than it does organized crime.

The ex-con -- who advocates for other political issues and asked that his name not be used here -- points out that phone calls made legally from prison are expensive and short.

Though they are banned, cell phones are prevalent in prison, with authorities confiscating tens of thousands of smuggled phones every year, according to a recent New York Times article. Prisoners use the phones to help control the flow of drugs both in and out of prisons, to organize protests, to set up Facebook pages, and in some cases, to conduct interviews with the media. Mostly, though, they use the phones to stay in touch with family members on the outside.

"Toward to end of my time in, cell phones began to appear in large numbers," says the local ex-con, who served more than two decades for nonviolent crimes. "The vast majority were used by inmates desperate to stay in touch with, and hold on to, their wives and children."

The calls were so expensive, this inmate could afford only one or two short calls to his family a week.

"If my wife, child, or a close friend were ill, I would blow the month's phone budget," he says.

According to the Times story, many of the phones are simply tossed over prison walls, and the phone bills are paid for by families. Prisons across the country are struggling to figure out a way to block phone services within prisons

without violating FCC regulations.

From the Times :

In Oklahoma, a convicted killer was caught in November posting photographs on his Facebook page of drugs, knives and alcohol that had been smuggled into his cell. In 2009, gang members in a Maryland prison were caught using their to approve targets for robberies and even to order seafood and cigars.

Even closely watched prisoners are sneaking phones in. Last month, California prison guards said they had found a flip phone under Charles Manson's mattress.

The logical solution would be to keep all cellphones out of prison. But that is a war that is being lost, corrections officials say. Prisoners agree. "Almost everybody has a phone," said Mike, 33, an inmate at Smith State Prison in Georgia who, like other prisoners interviewed for this article, asked that his full name not be used for fear of retaliation. "Almost every phone is a . Almost everybody with a smartphone has a Facebook."

In this case, says the local ex-con, the real crime is the inflated cost of calls, which force concerned prisoners to opt for illicit forms of communication:

"The real cost of a call is pennies, but prisons make a huge profit from inmate phones. Most inmates can't afford to stay in touch with family. That is the root cause of the cell phone problem in prisons."

Colombia catches girl 'smuggling 74 mobiles into jail'

The girl said she was visiting a relative at the Bellavista prison in Medellin

Prison officials in Colombia say they have caught an 11-year-old girl trying to smuggle dozens of mobile phones and a gun into a jail.

The guards became suspicious when they saw what they described as irregular shapes underneath the girl's jumper.

When they investigated they found 74 mobile phones and a revolver taped to her back.

The girl said she had come to the prison in Medellin to visit a relative jailed for illegal gun possession.

She was accompanied by a 25-year-old woman who identified herself as the girl's sister.

Authorities at the Bellavista prison say the two had made it past one security control, where the woman's identity was checked.

Special privileges

Reports say the girl was trying to slip past the second checkpoint, where visitors are patted down and their bags searched.

It was there that security personnel spotted something on her back and carried out the search, which a guard told Caracol radio revealed "two Blackberries, 72 mobile phones of varying quality, and a .38-calibre gun".

The two are being held pending further investigation.

The news comes only days after Colombian media revealed that a former senator remanded in custody while awaiting trial for alleged links with a paramilitary group had held a lavish birthday party at La Picota jail in Bogota.

The former senator had earlier had his cell remodelled, breaking down a wall to double its space.

The revelations prompted the transfer of La Picota director Himelda Lopez

Charles Manson had a cellphone?

California prisons fight inmate cellphone proliferation

Contraband cellphones are burgeoning among prisoners, giving them the ability to arrange crimes on the outside. Even Charles Manson was caught with one. But it's not illegal for state prisoners to possess the devices.

Contraband cellphones are becoming so prevalent in California prisons that guards can't keep them out of the hands of the most notorious and violent inmates: Even Charles Manson, orchestrator of one of the most notorious killing rampages in U.S. history, was caught with an LG flip phone under his prison mattress.

Manson made calls and sent text messages to people in California, New Jersey, Florida and British Columbia before officers discovered the phone, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections.

asked whether Manson had used the device to direct anyone to commit a crime or to leave a threatening message, Thornton said, "I don't know, but it's troubling that he had a cellphone since he's a person who got other people to murder on his behalf."

Although officials say inmates use smuggled cellphones for all manner of criminal activity, including running drug rings from behind bars, intimidating witnesses and planning escapes, it is not a crime to possess one in a California prison.

In August, President Obama signed a bill banning cellphones from federal prisons and making it a crime, punishable by up to a year in jail, to smuggle one in. That law does not apply to state institutions.

The proliferation of cellphones in California prisons has been exponential in recent years, authorities say. Guards found 1,400 in 2007, when the department began to keep records of confiscations. The number jumped to 6,995 in 2009 and stands at 8,675 so far this year.

The phones show up in minimum security work camps as well as in the most heavily guarded administrative segregation units — whose residents include gang leaders confined to their cells around the clock except for brief stints when they're allowed to pace around metal cages in the prison yards.

Prisoners and supplies coming into those units are searched, but inmates sometimes hide devices in their body cavities, officials said.

There have also been state-documented cases of guards bringing phones into prisons. An inspector general's report last year noted that the phones fetch up to $1,000 each and highlighted the case of a corrections officer who made $150,000 in a single year by supplying the devices to inmates. He was fired, the report said. Criminal charges were not an option.

Examples of inmates using phones to run criminal enterprises are not hard to find. In August, Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, now the governor-elect, trumpeted the arrest of 34 Nuestra Familia gang members in Visalia who had been following orders from incarcerated leaders.

Last month, two escapees from Folsom prison were recaptured after they disappeared from a minimum-security work detail. They used a contraband cellphone to arrange for a friend pick to them up, said warden Rick Hill.

Inmates also use the phones to contact each other. "We know they are communicating building to building to thwart our efforts to recover contraband," Hill said.

Prison administrators across the country have been asking for the authority to jam cellphone signals on prison grounds, but the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the nation's airwaves, has refused.

The politically powerful telecommunications industry lobby has argued that jamming is not precise enough, and legitimate customers trying to use their phones near prisons could also be denied service.

The industry is pushing a more expensive solution called "managed access," which would allow only calls from approved phones to transmit through towers near prisons. Calls from numbers not on the approved list would not go through.

Next year California officials will test such a system, similar to one begun in August near a Mississippi prison. Authorities in that state said the program blocked more than 216,000 unauthorized phone calls and text messages in the first month.

The system didn't cost taxpayers anything, said Mississippi prison spokeswoman Suzanne Singletary.

It was paid for by Global Tel Link, a national company that charges inmates to make calls from many state prisons, including those in Mississippi and California. Who will pay for California's pilot program has not been determined.

Prisoner-rights advocates argue that cellphones let prisoners avoid high fees for making collect calls from prison pay phones — the only allowed method of phone communication, with all calls monitored — and help them maintain crucial bonds with family and friends while they serve time.

But family contact can cut two ways, prison officials say. In September, an inmate at Avenal State Prison in Central California had been calling his 75-year-old mother to get her to collect drug debts owed by customers on the street. After guards found the phone, police raided the woman's La Puente home and found more than $24,000 cash, said Doug Snell, a corrections department spokesman.

The woman was arrested and charged with unauthorized communication with an inmate. A trial is pending.

In September, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have imposed a $5,000 fine on anyone caught giving a phone to a prisoner. In his veto message, Schwarzenegger complained that the bill did not make it a serious crime for a prisoner to possess a phone and did not include the threat of jail time for the smuggler.

"Signing this measure would mean that smuggling a can of beer into a prison carries with it a greater than delivering a cellphone to the leader of a criminal street gang," Schwarzenegger wrote.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D- Pacoima), who sponsored the bill, SB 525, said he was caught between a governor who wants to put smugglers in prison and a Senate Public Safety Committee policy against adding new felonies to the state penal code for fear of exacerbating California's prison overcrowding.

Early this year, a panel of three federal judges ordered the state to reduce its prison population by some 46,000 inmates to alleviate the cramped conditions. Schwarzenegger appealed the decision; the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Tuesday.

"The fact that Charles Manson had a cellphone in prison is just further proof that the situation is out of control," a frustrated Padilla said last week. "I'm not giving up. Until we have a law on the books with real consequences, this will continue to be a danger."

State Sen. Mark Leno (D- San Francisco), who is chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee and responsible for enforcing the policy against creating new felonies, said he's not opposed to creating a felony charge to deter people from smuggling phones into prison. But he warned that courts have ruled that the prison inmate population can't be increased, so some who are currently locked up in state facilities would have to be kept in county jails.

For now, the only recourse prison officials have when they find an inmate with a phone is to charge him or her with a violation of department policy.

Prison officials would not release the identities of any of the people Manson contacted. But the entertainment news show Inside Edition broadcast recordings of a voice, identified as Manson's, on March 23, 2009. Four days later, guards found a phone during a search of Manson's cell.

One of the clips features Manson's raspy, high-pitched voice singing, "I've seen the world spinning on fire, I've danced and sang in the devil's choir."

Manson, 76, who is technically eligible for parole but will almost certainly die in prison for ordering the ritualistic murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others in 1969, had 30 days added to his sentence after his phone was discovered.

"He was counseled and reprimanded, too," Thornton said.

Texas: A jail sentence of 60 years was handed down to an inmate caught with cell phone

According to the Palestine Herald-Press, Derrick Ross, 38, a Coffield Unit inmate was sentenced to (a shocking) 60 years in prison Tuesday after an Anderson County (Texas) jury found him guilty of possessing a cell phone in a correctional facility.

... Because Ross was found to be a habitual offender (on three different occasions he stole cars), the range of punishment for having a cell phone in a correctional facility was 25 years to 99 years or life. Normally the range of punishment would be 2 to 10 years.

A sentence of 60 years is one of the highest sentences in the state that has been handed down by a jury for possession of a cell phone in prison.

Trying to Keep Cell Phones Out of Prison

Officials conduct a contraband search during a rare prison-wide lockdown at McNeil Island Correctional Center in McNeil Island, Washington.

Prison authorities used to have almost complete control over an inmate's ability to communicate with the outside world. By checking their mail and parceling out telephone access — at scheduled times on easily and legally tapped landlines — communication for inmates was difficult and often expensive (their families had to pay for the hefty collect calls, usually the only kind allowed in jail). Today, however, as cell phones proliferate (with an estimated 3.5 billion and counting), they are reaching into every corner of the planet — including jail cells. Authorities in India recently confiscated more than 600 cell phones in a prison in the state of Gujarat. Not even high-security areas like Texas' death row are exempt.

Cell-phone access can mean chaos. Brazilian officials say cell phones are used to organize and plan widespread riots that are endemic to their crowded prisons; Canadian prosecutors said a notorious drug kingpin continued business behind bars using his cell phone; and a man awaiting trial on a homicide charge in Maryland has been accused of arranging via cell phone the murder of a key witness in the case. The examples go on and on, some bordering on the absurd. The mother of a prisoner in Texas even called authorities to complain about her son's bad cell-phone reception in jail. (See pictures of the cell phone through the ages.)

Most prison cell-phone incidents, however, raise serious security concerns. Texas death-row inmate Richard Tabler allegedly used a smuggled cell phone in recent weeks to make threatening calls to Texas state senator John Whitmire, chairman of a key criminal jurisprudence committee. The calls were among 2,800 made in just one month from cell phones used by Tabler and nine of his fellow death-row inmates. After Whitmire alerted state prison authorities to the calls, the high-security East Texas prison was locked down and searched. Authorities found Tabler's phone hidden in the ceiling above a shower. They also found 11 other phones in the sweep. Last week, another search led to the discovery of two SIMM cards in a Bible belonging to death-row inmate Hank Skinner. He denied having a phone, but an X-ray revealed one hidden in his rectum.

Even before Tabler's notorious calls, Texas prison authorities were investigating 19 cases of death-row cell-phone use and 700 cases throughout the entire state system. Tabler's mother and sister have been arrested on felony charges for buying cell-phone minutes and equipment for him. But it is not just family members who help smuggle the phones. Prison authorities say guards have been paid $2,000 — more than a month's wages — to bring in contraband cell phones. Small cell phones and postage-stamp-size SIMM cards are easy to smuggle into prisons in body cavities or simply by throwing them over a fence inside a ball, says Josh Gelinas, a spokesman for South Carolina's prison system, where more than 1,000 phones have been confiscated this year.

Some states, like Florida and New Jersey, have passed new tough laws making cell-phone-smuggling a felony. They are also using cell-phone-sniffing dogs to hunt down the contraband and assigning guards to do metal-detecting wand searches for hidden phones. But Gelinas said South Carolina's prison system is "short-funded" and cannot afford to divert manpower to searches. "It makes much more sense to use the cell-phone jamming technology that's available," Gelinas says. The problem for state and local prison administrators is that jamming cell-phone signals is illegal and available only to federal agencies under strictly controlled guidelines. Anyone violating the law, including state and local law enforcement, can be heavily fined by the Federal Government.

South Carolina is hoping to persuade federal authorities to allow cell-phone jamming. Last week prison officials invited CellAntenna Corp. to demonstrate such technology for state and federal lawmakers. The prison system also invited representatives from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates jamming. The demonstration, however, drew opposition from the cell-phone industry's lobbying arm, CTIA — The Wireless Association, which sent a letter to the FCC urging the agency to block CellAntenna from "brazenly" violating federal law. The association's chief lobbyist, Steve Largent, a retired professional football player and former Congressman, said jamming could interfere with emergency phone calls and public safety communications. But the demonstration went forward. CellAntenna used a suitcase-size device to block cell-phone signals in a large auditorium, showing how a defined area could be jammed.

The debate over jamming by state and local governments has been presented to the FCC before. Both CellAntenna, a Miami-based company, and CTIA have introduced petitions seeking rule changes, and now the state of Texas has filed a request for clarification on the issue, given its recent problems with inmates. Howard Melamed, president of CellAntenna, has been waging battles in the courts and at the FCC against jamming for more than a decade. Melamed says he has no interest in lifting current laws to allow individuals or private enterprises like theaters and restaurants to install jamming devices, but he does believe that state and local law enforcement should have access to it. But CTIA spokesman Joe Farren disagrees. "You are talking about potentially blocking emergency communications within and potentially outside a large structure," he says. Farren insists that "this is a contraband issue" and, as such, prisons should utilize searches and other methods to find phones rather than "throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

Speaking to TIME from Panama, where he was on a sales trip to Latin American prisons, Melamed said CellAntenna is selling jamming technology worldwide, sometimes with the help of promotional trips arranged by the U.S. Department of Commerce. He calls it ironic that one branch of the Federal Government is promoting jamming while another is blocking it. Across the globe, more and more countries are buying jamming equipment. Britain has embarked on a major study to address the issue. Given a new U.S. Administration and anticipated changes at the top of the FCC, it is unlikely that the dueling petitions before the agency will move at anything approaching warp speed, despite mounting pressure from state prison authorities. Most observers expect this debate to land in the lap of Congress. Meanwhile, prison authorities will continue with their cavity searches.

Seven Prisoners Hospitalised After Hiding Mobile Phones in Their Bodies

Pakistan's Prisons Department has carried out a series of sweeps of prisoners at Camp Jail using metal detectors and seized 30 mobile phones which had been hidden in their rectums. Seven of the prisoners had to have medical intervention to remove the phones.

Camp Jail Superintendent Gulzar Ahmad Butt said that the mobile phones had been found during a physical search of the prisoners and when they were screened with metal detectors.

The identity of the seven men has been made public via the prison notice board and they have been placed in chakkis (small cells where a person can only sit or stand) as punishment.

The phenomena of prisoners and prison visitors concealing phones and other forbidden items inside their body is fairly commonplace. Hiding phones inside the body is not without its dangers though - and last June, a UK prisoner was admitted to hospital after he hid a mobile phone inside his body and was unable to expel it later. He had to have over 200 internal stitches and the doctors had to remove part of his bladder.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said at the time "It is now well established that prisoners can and do secrete mobile phones in body cavities

Nun the the wiser: mobile phone found in jail birthday cake

The chaplain of Mountjoy Jail in Dublin was used unwittingly yesterday in an attempt to smuggle a mobile phone into the jail -- in a birthday cake.

Gardai have interviewed the chaplain, Sister Eithne, but are satisfied that she is innocent and had no idea that a phone was concealed in the cake.

The request for a birthday cake was made to the jail authorities by a prisoner serving a two-year sentence for an arson attack. It was granted, and a senior Mountjoy official asked Sr Eithne to collect the cake and bring it into the prison.

When the chaplain arrived back at the prison yesterday at lunchtime she handed over the cake to be scanned through the x-ray machine that is being used to combat the smuggling of contraband goods into the jail.

The machine immediately detected an object hidden in the cake and prison officers removed a mobile phone.

Prison authorities contacted the gardai, who began an investigation. Initial statements are being taken from the chaplain, the senior prison official and staff at the entrance to the complex. Detectives will also interview the prisoner, and further inquiries are being focused on the source of the cake.

A full report on the incident was being awaited last night by the director general of the Irish Prison Service, Brian Purcell.

A spokesman for the Prison Service said last night that the incident underlined the effectiveness of the recently installed security equipment.

Since the x-ray machines were introduced, the smuggling of drugs and mobile phones into Mountjoy through visitors has ceased and the price of purchasing a phone in the jail has jumped dramatically.

Officials said this incident showed prisoners were becoming desperate to find other ways to bring in the contraband.

"This is a classic case," one official said last night. "It's like a plot out of an old English film, made in Pinewood studios. But in this case, heavenly intervention was on our side."

It is a criminal offence to smuggle a mobile phone into a jail, carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Drugs, phones wing their way to prisoners

Carrier pigeons walk on an empty platform during a public transport strike in Marseille November 22, 2005. A sharp increase in drugs and cellphones found inside a Brazilian prison mystified officials -- until guards spotted some distressed pigeons struggling to stay airborne .

Oddly Enough

- A sharp increase in drugs and cellphones found inside a Brazilian prison mystified officials -- until guards spotted some distressed pigeons struggling to stay airborne.

Inmates at the prison in Marilia, Sao Paulo state had been training carrier pigeons to smuggle in goods using cell phone sized pouches on their backs, a low-tech but ingenious way of skipping the high-tech security that visitors faced.

"We have sophisticated equipment to search people when they go in, but they avoided this by finding another way to bring in cellphones and drugs," prison director Luciano Gamateli told Globo TV.

Officials said the pigeons, bred and trained inside the prison, lived on the jail's roof, where prisoners would take their deliveries before smuggling the birds out again through friends and family.

The scheme was uncovered when guards on the prison walls saw some pigeons struggling to fly.

Brazil's overcrowded prisons have notoriously lax security, with cell-phone and drug use common among inmates. Two years ago, a powerful Sao Paulo prison gang used cell-phones to orchestrate a wave of attacks against police and public property.

Warden hangs up on cellphones inside Afghan jail

According to the National Post, the warden of Afghanistan's most notorious prison is cracking down on a dangerous new weapon falling into the hands of inmates: the cellular phone .

Several inmates with political or criminal connections are obtaining cellphones illegally to co-ordinate protests, attacks, or even robberies from inside Pul-e-Charkhi, the prison's recently appointed warden, Cmdr. Haji Dolath, 50, said.

Located on the outskirts of Kabul, off an isolated stretch of dirt road, Pul-e-Charkhi has about 3,000 prisoners who come from all over the country. About half of the prisoners are Taliban, or leaders of criminal gangs .

"As it is the central jail of Afghanistan, prisoners from all parts of the country -- the most dangerous people -- are brought here," Cmdr. Dolath told CanWest News Service in an interview at his office this week. "With the phones they can guide other Taliban members on the outside, and the outside members can give them guidance.

... Controlling the influx of cellphones into the prison is difficult because inmates -- or their families -- are bribing guards to bring them in, Dolath said. One guard described how prisoners were willing to pay as much as five times the price of a $40 phone.

It's a fortune for Afghan prison guards who earn about $50 a month

, Cmdr. Dolath said.

... The cellphones are also a major problem inside the prison, as inmates in Pul-e-Charkhi's seven blocks -- one of which is for 90 female prisoners -- can use them to communicate with each other and rally their political contacts. When authorities tried to implement a , inmates used their phones to lobby certain Afghan MPs, said deputy minister of justice Mr. Hashimzai.

Uniforms were never introduced. "

Cellphones Found Inside Cellmates

Four prisoners in an El Salvador jail hid cellphones, a phone charger and spare chips in their bowels so they could coordinate crimes from their cells, prison officials said on Wednesday

-- Inmates reach new creativity level in smuggling in cell phones - Cellphones are making their way into jails and prison through all kinds of methods: Drug barons incarcerated in a Thai prison have been using toads to smuggle in mobile phones and SIM cards . Elsewhere they're stuffed inside mayonnaise jars, hidden in compost piles, shoved into the soles of shoes, slipped inside hollowed-out blocks of cheese . But the most alarming way to obtain a cellphone is to simply to pay a corrupt correctional officer to provide one.

Drug barons turn to toads to smuggle mobile phones

Inmates reach new creativity level in smuggling in cell phones. According to PCPro, drug barons incarcerated in a Thai prison have been using toads, yes toads, to smuggle in mobile phones and SIM cards.

"The Bangkok Post reports that a number of mobile phones and SIM cards were seized during a surprise search at Bang Kwang prison in Nonthaburi province yesterday'.

Prison commander Sopon Thititam-prue said that smuggling attempts are commonplace, and certainly innovative.

'We have found a mobile phone hidden in food, in pork leg stew,' he said. 'SIM cards were found inside a dried squid. One was found stuffed inside a dead toad which was thrown over the prison wall.'

The newest prison contraband: cellphones Cellphones are making their way into jails and prison through all kinds of methods: They're stuffed inside mayonnaise jars, hidden in compost piles, shoved into the soles of shoes, slipped inside hollowed-out blocks of cheese. But the most alarming way to obtain a cellphone is to simply to pay a corrupt correctional officer to provide one.

Mobiles in top security prison

Four mobiles were discovered hidden by inmates at one of Britain's top security prisons, claims a report by the chief inspector of prisons on Belmarsh, in south-east London, according to the BBC.

"Mobile phones are banned from the jail because inmates could use them to plan their escape or run criminal empires from inside.

The inspectors noted: "One prisoner found in possession of the phone admitted that he had concealed it in his underpants during a strip search - searchers had failed to lift the upper clothing to reveal the extra pair of underpants where it was hidden."

For other incidents reported from around the world, on cell phones being smuggled into jails, see previous posts in Textually.org:

-- Staying well connected in jail. Recently a mafia don in the Kolkata prison of New Delhi, planned the killing of Delhi Police officers by communicating with his partners in Dubai via .

‘‘Most of the big gangsters currently in jail use the mobile phone to plan and execute their operations outside" according to a senior police official.

-- Convict ran drug ring from prison. A Canadian-born encarcerated convicted criminal, used a cell phone smuggled into the penitentiary to organize a cocaine run from Miami to Canada.

Detector for locating hidden cell phones

As cell phones proliferate in jails around the world , enabling gangster to organize crimes on the outside from behind bars or have access to cash by selling minutes or actual handsets to other inmates. A company in Tenessee is selling a product to help detect where prisoners are stashing them in their cells - even when the phone is turned off.

"A management company in the United States, The GEO Group Inc. is offering a new application of patented hightech equipment for detecting and locating hidden contraband cellular phones (even if the phone is not transmitting or even turned off).

The equipment, the ORION Non-Linear Junction Detector (NLJD) manufactured by REI in Algood Tennessee, responds to electronic components, allowing the user to detect and locate electronic items (such as hidden cellular phones), even if the electronic item is turned off or not transmitting. This technology offers a working solution for correctional facilities to manage contraband cellular phones".

Prison's mobile phone blocker does not work

The system designed to disrupt mobile signals coming into Sweden’s high-security Hall prison is not working as it is supposed to, allowing prisoners to use mobile phones, reports The Local, Sweden's News in English.

"The installation at the prison – the first prison to receive this technology in Sweden – has been a failure , said those responsible at facility in Södertälje, south of Stockholm.

The system was intended to block out both mobile signals inside the prison walls and register them".

Cell phone smuggling is a big problem in Texas prisons

Phones smuggled into jails is a problem worldwide - this blog has an entire chapter devoted to Inmates and cell phone stories - as thanks to cell phones convicts are able to stay in touch with the outside world and continue business as usual (sort of), running rackets, directing drug cartels, even ordering executions from behind bars.

In the UK penitenciaries, it seems SIM cards have become a valuable currency , as they can contain the key to a criminal enterprise. One prison officer said told The Telelgraph. "It is the equivalent of handing someone a ready- made business".

Today The Houston Chronicle opens our eyes to yet another way cell phones are used by Texas inmates, they're used a currency as prisoners sell minutes to other inmates . "It's just like American Express it's good as cash," said John Moriarty, inspector general of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Investigators say prisoners are willing to pay between $350 and $600 to have a phone smuggled into prison.

... But some defense attorneys say < prosecutors haven't proven cell phones are used for anything more than getting in touch with family. Texas prisons don't have pay phones, so offenders are desperate to communicate .

"Drugs take you out of the prison psychologically," said David P. O'Neil, a defense attorney in Huntsville and former director of the prison system's public defender's office. "Phones place you outside the prison in a different sense. There is a premium on escaping in that sense."

Drug ring phone cards on sale in jail

The war against drugs is being undermined by a black market in mobile phone sim cards containing details of drug dealing franchises, reports The Telegraph.

Recently jailed prisoners are selling the cards to inmates nearing release for up to £20,000. Each contains a microchip storing the telephone numbers of drug suppliers and addicts, which were once in the memory of the dealer's phone. That information provides access to an established drug-dealing network, with the potential to earn thousands of pounds a week.

Experts are worried that the illicit trade is hampering police efforts to close down drug networks because a criminal, armed with the information on the sim (subscriber identity module) card, can replace a dealer who has been locked up.

"Sim cards have become big currency in prison because they can contain the key to a criminal enterprise," said one prison officer. "It is the equivalent of handing someone a ready-made business. If someone goes to prison for a long time because of a drugs offence it makes sense for them to sell their . The addicts will not be too choosy about where they get their drugs from."

Because of their size, sim cards are difficult to detect.

The prison officer added: "Sim cards are very small and easy to hide. Prisoners can keep them in their mouths and all sorts of places without fear of being detected."

Australia. Total ban on mobile phones in state jails

The The Courrier-Mail reports that staff, contractors, police officers and even dignitaries will be banned from taking mobile phones into Queensland prisons under a security crackdown.

"The ban was issued following concerns prisoners may be able to take advantage of new technology which allows people to e-mail and access the Internet from mobile phones.

Prisoners are already banned from having mobiles but bans will now be extended to anyone entering a prison including staff, management, contractors, visiting police officers and dignitaries such as the Premier to reduce the risk of them falling into the wrong hands .

These people had previously been able to seek permission to take a phone into a jail, but this will now be denied. Anyone caught trying to take a mobile phone into a Queensland prison faces a maximum penalty of two years' jail.

.. Mobile phones were a growing problem in jails worldwide. cf Inmates and cell phones category in textually.org

... Prison authorities across Australia have found mobile phones hidden in body parts, in tins of baked beans, cakes and blocks of cheese .

Several years ago, ministers considered blocking mobile phone reception in jails after NSW authorities found 35 mobiles had been used to make more than 56,000 calls. "

Convicted Murderer Posts Pics from Prison on Facebook

Following the news of Charles Manson - one of America's notorious killers - having used a cell phone from prison to call random people, now a convicted murderer locked up for killing an Oklahoma sheriff was caught posting pictures to his Facebook page from inside his prison cell using a smuggled-in cell phone.

Inmate Justin Walker apparently used his blackberry to upload the photos onto Facebook.

DECEMBER 3, 2010 Charles Manson Caught with a cell phone in jail

According to the Los Angeles Times, Charles Manson, orchestrator of one of the most notorious killing rampages in U.S. history - and convicted of committing the 1969 Los Angeles Tate-LaBianca murders - was caught with a cell phone under his prison mattress last year, which he used to call unidentified people in California, New Jersey, Florida and British Columbia.

Asked whether Manson had used the device to direct anyone to commit a crime or to leave a threatening message, Thornton said, "I don't know, but it's troubling that he had a cellphone since he's a person who got other people to murder on his behalf."

NOVEMBER 19, 2010 Deaf inmates Allowed to use Videophones in Virginia Prison

Following a lawsuit for discrimination by deaf and hard of hearing inmates at Powhatan Correctional Center in Virginia, the prison will become the first major institution in the country to install a videophone so that hearing impaired inmates can communicate with family and friends.

[via The Washington Post]

OCTOBER 29, 2010 Inmate calls Chronicle from prison to find out about new cell phone jamming legislation

The San Francisco Chronicle received a call yesterday from a man who was concerned about efforts to jam cell phones in prisons.

He had every reason to be concerned, he was an inmate calling the Chronicle from prison.

The called who said he acquired his phone six months ago -- provided some insider knowledge: The devices go for $800 to $1,200 on the black market, he said, with higher prices for smart phones. Maybe 5 percent of his fellow prisoners have them.

Though prison officials say phones are often smuggled inside in packages, our guy said, "It's mostly the guards, man. You know what's up."

How often does our inmate tipster talk on the phone?

"All day long, man, as long as I can."

Who does he talk to?

"Everybody -- girls mostly. I'm not a gang member, I don't do no gang s--- or drugs. Just family and girls."

We told him there hadn't been any big changes in the jamming effort. The federal legislation, introduced in January 2009, has been stuck in a House subcommittee since March of that year.

Good, he said.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010 NC Guards find cell phone inside NC inmate's rectum

There's really nothing to add.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010 Bow and arrow used to send phones into Brazil jail

After training carrier pigeons to carry cell phones in pouches on their backs, Brazilian mobsters taught a 17 year old boy how to use a bow and arrow to smuggle cell phones into a prison in southern Brazil. He was caught because one of the arrows struck a guard in the back.

According to the AP, the teen was able to shoot at least four cell phones into the prison before he was caught late Wednesday.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 Gang leaders orchestrated crimes from prison using cell phones

A coalition of law enforcement agencies has arrested four Nuestra Familia gang leaders and 30 gang members. Several of those caught were allegedly given orders to commit murder and other violent crimes by imprisoned gang leaders who were serving time in Pelican Bay State prison, which is near the Oregon border. The imprisoned leaders of Nuestra Familia sent them encrypted messages via cell phones.

[via The San Francisco Chronicle]

AUGUST 31, 2010 Wolfhound handset sniffs out inmates' cellphones

As cellphone jamming is, for the most part, still out of the question in US prisons, Berkeley Varitronics has introduced a handset called the Wolfhound that hones in on cell phone signals.

[Watch video demo on YouTube. via engadget]

Wolfhound 'Sniffs Out' Ten Contraband Cell Phones in Less Than 30 Minutes in Thai Prison

-- Cell phone detector dogs - The first dog to sniff cell phones was called Murphy, he was a 20 month-old English Springer Spaniel in 2006 who had been trained in prisons across the East of England.

AUGUST 23, 2010 Mafia using football show to send text messages to jailed bosses

According to The Telegraph, Italian gangsters are using a football TV show’s text ticker to send coded messages to their jailed bosses.

The Italian program allows football fans to send SMS text messages which then run along a ticker tape at the bottom of the screen when the show is being broadcast.

Anti-mafia prosecutors believe that members of organised crime gangs have caught onto the interactive feature, sending seemingly innocuous comments and remarks which in fact contain important messages for imprisoned mafia godfathers, many of whom continue to run their criminal empires despite being behind bars.

AUGUST 11, 2010 President Obama signs into law ban on cell phones in federal prisons

Hoping to stop federal inmates from directing crimes from behind bars, President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday a prohibition on cell phone use by prisoners. CNN reports.

The law prohibits the use or possession of mobile phones and wireless devices, and calls for up to a year in prison for anyone found guilty of trying to smuggle one to an inmate.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons confiscated more than 2,600 cell phones from minimum security facilities and nearly 600 from secure federal institutions last year.

... Cell phones are prized among inmates, officials said. A government report said California prison inmates pay $500 to $1,000 per cell phone.

The new law calls for a government study to be issued in a year to measure the effectiveness of the new prohibition.

AUGUST 10, 2010 Smuggling cell phones to inmates now a misdemeanor in Calif

The California State Senate on Monday unanimously passed SB525, which would make it a misdemeanor to deliver a cell phone or other wireless communication device to an inmate. It also would criminalize possessing such a device with the intention of giving it to a prisoner. Violators face fines of up to $5,000.

[via Silicon Valley Mercury News]

JULY 21, 2010 Congress moves to crack down on prison cell phones

Congress moved Tuesday to make it tougher for inmates to use cell phones and wireless devices to direct criminal activities within or outside prison walls, reports Cellular News.

The House voted by voice to close a loophole in federal law by banning the use or possession of cell phones or wireless devices in federal prisons and classifying those devices as contraband.

Currently, cell phones and wireless devices are not specifically defined as contraband, and inmates and guards caught smuggling the devices into prisons are rarely punished.

JULY 13, 2010 Prison guard gets 3 years in cell phone smuggling

You read about cell phones smuggled to inmates via bribed wardens, but here's a case reported by The Boston Herald where a prison guard was actually caught and sentenced.

A corrections officer at East Jersey State Prison who admitted smuggling two cell phones to an inmate who is a member of the Latin Kings street gang has been sentenced to three years in prison.

The man was arrested in August 2009 after investigators found that he obtained the cell phones from associates of the Latin Kings and smuggled them into the prison in Woodbridge in exchange for cash payments.

MAY 15, 2010 CTIA Statement on How to Prevent Contraband Cell Phones in Prisons

Below is a statement issued May 12, 2010 by the CTIA.

CTIA-The Wireless Association® President and CEO Steve Largent issued the following statement in response to the Notice of Inquiry (NOI) issued by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) on how to prevent contraband cell phones in prisons:

“CTIA and the wireless industry will be focused on educating the NTIA, the FCC, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the National Institute of Justice on why they should support non-interfering technologies such as cell detection and managed access to solve the problem of contraband phones in correctional institutions.

These are preferred and superior solutions as they are lawful, currently available and would not cause interference for legal consumers or public safety officials. In fact, these non-interfering technologies were successfully demonstrated in 2009 at a Maryland prison where numerous states’ corrections officials were able to observe them in the field.

“We hope that as these organizations focus on this important issue, they join us in supporting stronger for prisoners who are found with a contraband device – and those who supply them.”

Photo above by Corbis, published on the Daily Mail. The 1,800 mobile phones confiscated since 2006 at the state prison in Vacaville, California.

MAY 9, 2010 Inmates and cell phones

The Daily Mail on how smuggled mobile phones are used by prisoners to commit crimes from their cells.

... Prisoners would rather have their own or a shared mobile phone. The reasons are apparent. Mobile phones can receive calls as well as making them, they cost less per call, they can be used at any time, they can take photographs and do other clever things. Prisoners also like mobile phones because they are not routinely monitored and so can be used for criminal purposes and in particular for drug trafficking.'

Read full article.

MARCH 22, 2010 UK and Wales' Prison wardens confiscate one cell phone every hour

Prisons fighting a war on illegal mobile phones are confiscating one an hour, according to The Mirror.

The number of handsets and SIM cards found in jails in England and Wales increased by 8% over the past 12 months to 8,786.

Convicts can use handsets to fix drug deals, issue threats, put messages on web pages and promote extremism.

Earlier this year 30 Facebook pages set up by prisoners were taken down. They had been updated from behind bars.

Records showed eight prisons where more than 100 mobiles were seized last year.

The worst was Altcourse, Liverpool, where 278 phones and 302 SIMS were confiscated.

MARCH 20, 2010 Cell phones smuggled over the air in Scottish Jail with a crossbow

We've heard of cell phones smuggled into jails in the most imaginative ways; they have been found hidden in mens' undwear, stuffed inside a toad or a dead squirrel, in mayonnaise jars, in compost piles, a prisoner's bowels, the soles of their shoes, inside hollowed-out blocks of cheese, or alarmingly and more commonly, through a corrupt correctional officer.

But flying through the air from the outside on a crossbow is a new one.

According to UK's Daily Record:

Accomplices on the outside are helping the prisoners get their booty past security.

They attach fishing line to crossbow bolts and fire them over the prison wall and into cell windows.

Prisoners then reel in the line to get the contraband - including drugs, weapons and mobile phones - which is attached to the other end.

FEBRUARY 17, 2010 Feds to Test Cell Phone Jamming in Prisons

Corrections officers will begin testing signal-jamming equipment in a Maryland prison later this week, as officials try to show Congress that the technology can thwart inmates from using forbidden handsets to commit crimes. Mobiledia reports.

Regulators hope the test, to be held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, will show that cell phone jammers can be used without interfering with emergency response signals and legitimate use near prisons, a concern of the Federal Communication Commission.

FEBRUARY 2, 2010 Australia. Ban on mobile phone jammers may be lifted for prisons

Mobile phone jammers will be allowed to operate in prisons if the communications regulator approves an exemption to a decade-old ban on the call-blocking devices, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

... Previously jammers had been allowed for some uses by the defence force and the federal police.

Submissions to the review are open until the end of April.

JANUARY 27, 2010 Photo from death row using a smuggled cell phone

According to statesman.com, a condemned San Antonio law enforcement killer sent a photo of himself out of Texas' death row two years ago using a smuggled cell phones.

The case confirms what prison officials have long suspected, that convicts — even those on death row, which is supposed to be the most secure part of Texas' massive prison system — have had Internet access with smuggled cell phones.

DECEMBER 30, 2009 Terror concerns over mobile phones in prison

A scary article from The Telegraph, linking mobile phones in prison to terrorist activity.

Mobile phones smuggled into British prisons could be used by Islamist militants to spread their extremist ideology and threaten national security, Conservatives claimed.

OCTOBER 13, 2009 Convicts Still Calling From Texas Prisons

According to NBC, one year after Texas prison operators promised to get mobile phones out of the hands of inmates, records show mobile phones are still getting into convicts hands.

A state report shows that authorities confiscated 995 cell phones between January and August, a rate that will top last year's 1,226 seizures if it continues, according to the Austin-American Statesman.

During the statewide lockdown a year ago, 22 cell phones were found on death row. During the latest search, none turned up, officials said.

OCTOBER 6, 2009 Prison Cell Phone Jamming Bill Passed In Senate

The Senate on Monday passed the Safe Prisons Communications Act of 2009 (S.251), which allows states to petition the Federal Communications Commission for the authority to "jam" - or block the use of cell phones from prison.

Under current law, the FCC does not allow cell phone jamming of any kind.

The bill will now move to the House of Representatives for consideration.

[via WBAL Radio]

SEPTEMBER 4, 2009 Maryland officials test cell phone detection at prison

Officials from five states observed tests on cell phone detection technology at a closed Maryland prison on Thursday, as states are taking a greater interest in finding ways to halt violence orchestrated by inmates behind prison walls. Cellular News reports.

The technology tested Thursday is designed to enable corrections officials to locate and root out contraband cell phones. It differs from cell phone jamming devices that would block signals and render cell phones useless in prison. Federal law now prohibits states from using the jamming devices, and legislation in Congress would change the law to allow states to use them.

AUGUST 19, 2009 Convicted drug dealer used cell phone to mastermind cocaine conspiracy

A convicted drug dealer who ran an international cocaine ring from a Yorkshire jail cell using a smuggled mobile phone to organise deliveries from central America has been jailed for 18 years. The Yorkshire Post reports.

George Moon made phone calls to a contact in Panama using the contraband phone and two sim cards, and organised an operation which saw £300,000 worth of drugs imported into the UK.

His actions "beggared belief", said Judge Bryn Holloway at Doncaster Crown Court, adding that the 62-year-old had led a "sophiscated and well-organised conspiracy" from behind bars at Lindholme Prison near Doncaster.

... The case comes after the Yorkshire Post revealed more than 4,000 mobile phones were seized in jails in England and Wales last year, prompting MPs to describe the situation as "grotesque".

Another recent case involved Nigel Ramsey, 23, who orchestrated the gangland killing of 17-year-old Tarek Chaiboub in Sheffield, using a mobile phone in his cell at Wolds Prison, near Hull.

JULY 28, 2009 Prison software sniffs out cell phone signals

A company called AirPatrol looks to solve illegal cell and wireless devices in prison with “Wireless Locator System” software. It’s basically able to sniff out Wi-Fi and cellular signals in a given area and pinpoint the location of those devices on a map, writes CrunchGear.

According to the company press release:

WLS is the best alternative solution to the contraband cell phone problem plaguing correctional facilities across the nation. WLS wirelessly detects and pinpoints contraband cell phones and unlike RF jamming techniques is completely legal and approved for use in the United States and doesn’t interfere with authorized, legitimate cell phone usage.

WLS yields 24 x 7, 365 days a year, real-time cell phone and Wi-Fi device location details throughout a correctional facility. WLS includes a forensics database, an essential tool for logging and archiving cell phone event information, including where a phone is detected, allowing prison monitors to see a log of the start and stop times of voice calls, as well as emails, SMS and MMS.

JULY 15, 2009 States Seek to Jam Prison Cellphone Signals

According to an article in The New York Times, blocking signals from contraband cellphones in jails might just get legal aproval.

Two dozen state corrections agencies have signed a petition that would waive a 1934 federal ban on telecommunications jamming for prisons and other exceptional cases.

Lobbyists for telecommunication companies say that any weakening of antijamming legislation could become a slippery slope that eventually could inappropriately limit cellphone use.

Law enforcement officials say that smuggled cellphones are a growing problem across the country, allowing inmates to make unmonitored calls.

Some states like California and Maryland have trained canine units to sniff out cellphones in prisons, but prison officials say that the best way to disrupt cellphone use is by using jamming equipment.

“Jamming technology has come a long way,” said Jon Ozmint, the director of South Carolina’s corrections system. “It used to be that you had to jam a large area.”

Picture left of inmates in the Carandiru Prison, Latin America's largest, use a celular phone during a 2001 rebellion in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

MAY 26, 2009 Remote control helicopters deliver cell phones to inmates

Police in Brazil have foiled a plot to smuggle mobile phones into a high- security prison using a remotely-controlled model helicopter. The BBC reports.

Prisoners in Brazilian jails routinely use mobile phones to carry on with criminal activity, and the police say the ones they recovered were probably intended to go to gang leaders inside the jail.

It is not the first time that the authorities have foiled an innovative attempt to smuggle material into a jail in Brazil.

Earlier this year Sao Paulo state prison guards uncovered a plot using pigeons to carry mobile phone parts over the walls of a jail.

MAY 20, 2009 Report. Smuggled Cell Phones Helping NJ Prisoners Commit Crimes from Jail

A new study of New Jersey’s prison system suggests that street gang members who are behind bars are able to do much of what they did on the street, in part by using new technologies, mostly cell phones. KYW Newsradio reports.

The State Commission of Investigation has traditionally probed organized crime. These days, their main concern is gangs like the “Bloods,” and Commission chair Cary Edwards says this 36-page report suggests their sphere of influence behind bars is "frightening."

"They use advanced cell phones, Blackberrys, other smuggled electronic devices to readily communicate and conduct criminal enterprises from within prisons while incarcerated."

Edwards says there is also extortion, drug dealing, and movement of what’s labeled “unlimited amounts of money” through inmate accounts.

Among the allegations: extortion of guards, and communications not only with those on the outside but with fellow gang members in other prisons.

We've heard of cell phones smuggled into jails in the most imaginative ways; they have been found hidden in mens' undwear, stuffed inside a toad or a dead squirrel, in mayonnaise jars, in compost piles, a prisoner's bowels, the soles of their shoes, inside hollowed-out blocks of cheese, or alarmingly and more commonly, through a corrupt correctional officer.

But flying through the air from the outside on a crossbow is a new one.

According to UK's Daily Record:

Accomplices on the outside are helping the prisoners get their booty past security.

They attach fishing line to crossbow bolts and fire them over the prison wall and into cell windows.

Prisoners then reel in the line to get the contraband - including drugs, weapons and mobile phones - which is attached to the other end.

Prison software sniffs out cell phone signals

A company called AirPatrol looks to solve illegal cell and wireless devices in prison with “Wireless Locator System” software. It’s basically able to sniff out Wi-Fi and cellular signals in a given area and pinpoint the location of those devices on a map.

“WLS is the best alternative solution to the contraband cell phone problem plaguing correctional facilities across the nation. WLS wirelessly detects and pinpoints contraband cell phones and unlike RF jamming techniques is completely legal and approved for use in the United States and doesn’t interfere with authorized, legitimate cell phone usage. WLS yields 24 x 7, 365 days a year, real-time cell phone and Wi-Fi device location details throughout a correctional facility. WLS includes a forensics database, an essential tool for logging and archiving cell phone event information, including where a phone is detected, allowing prison monitors to see a log of the start and stop times of voice calls, as well as emails, SMS and MMS.”

Apparently jamming cell phone signals is illegal, despite a similar movement by movie theater owners to keep people from using mobile devices. Maybe they could just use this software instead to pinpoint all the cell phone-using tweens. That, or make everyone sit on the body orifice scanner on the way into the theater.

Cellphone sniffer hunts down illicit prison calls

Contraband cellphones are a massive problem in prisons – now there’s a way to see who’s using one. A way of pinpointing exactly where a call is coming from could help clamp down on the practice. New Scientist reports.

A team at Intelligent Automation Inc (IAI) of Rockville, Maryland, has now found a way to pinpoint the prison cell that a call is coming from. This has not been done before, says IAI engineer Benjamin Lonske, because the signals in a prison wing are just too messy to analyse. "Inside, there are a lot of radio waves from phones bouncing off the cell doors, walls and stairs," he says. This foils attempts to triangulate the source of the signal.

By installing four 5-centimetre antennas at the corners of the building of interest, IAI has managed to locate a phone in use to within 50 centimetres, the team says.

AUGUST 7, 2012 Russian inmates face mobile phone crackdown, including extra prison time

The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) is considering tougher punishment, including extra prison time, for inmates who use mobile phones, Izvestia daily reported on Tuesday. RIA Novosti reports.

A source from the Federal Penitentiary Service said tougher punishment for mobile phone use is needed to maintain discipline and order inside prisons.

But rights activists say the move is aimed at stemming a stream of complaints from prisoners who use the phones to report beatings and other abuses in prisons and jails. Russian prisons currently prohibit mobile phones. A prisoner caught with one faces up to 10 days in . But prison officials say that has not been an effective deterrent.

Despite regular monitoring and checks, prisons and penal colonies are literally flooded with the phones.

JUNE 30, 2012 UK Prisons to be given mobile phone jamming devices

According to The Telegraph, prisons in the UK are to be given gadgets that block mobile phone signals in order to stop inmates committing more crimes while behind bars.

The Ministry of Justice says that handsets smuggled into jails are being used by offenders to harass victims, organise gangs and deal drugs on the outside. It has already carried out trials of jamming equipment, which is illegal if used in public, and is about to give portable devices to some prison governors.

And next week the Government will back a Bill proposed by a Conservative MP that would allow the authorities to track mobile calls attempted by criminals as well as stop them getting through to their associates.

... Trials have demonstrated that equipment can be capable of denying signals to illicit mobile phones within the prison perimeter as required by

law and Ofcom regulations, but that this is not a quick, simple or cheap solution,” said Crispin Blunt, the prisons minister. One expert claimed it would cost £250,000 ($392,000) to block signals at a single jail.

APRIL 16, 2012 Prisons system tries new method to stop contraband cell phones

State corrections officials say they have come up with a no-cost plan to stop the illegal use of cell phones inside prisons by inmates, a problem that has plagued the prison system for years. The Sacramento Bee reports.

Corrections officails announced today that Global Tel Link has been awarded a contract for inmates to use the company's service to make calls from each prison's authorized telephone system.

The company will receive revenues from those phone calls and will use the proceeds of that deal to install systems to block unauthorized cell signals at prisons, including phone calls, text messages, emails and attempts to access the Internet.

The system was tested last year at two prisons over an 11-day period for about eight hours a day, officials said, and blocked more than 25,000 unauthorized cell signals.

JANUARY 24, 2012 Cell Hound alerts prison officials as soon as a cellphone call is made

The federal government confiscated more than 21,000 cellphones in 2010 from inmates in correctional facilities nationwide. Prison security officials have longed battled contraband, such as cellphones and now a Maryland company may have an answer. 11News reports.

Security Products ITT is marketing Cell Hound, its technology that can alert prison officials as soon as a cellphone call is made. Company director Terry Vittner said the technology is better than cellphone jamming, which creates radio frequency pollution. The pollution prevents calls from going out or coming into the facility.

Cell Hound can also used by businesses that want to know if workers are on the phone during critical work hours.

NOVEMBER 7, 2011 Rickers Island gets their own cell phone sniffing dog

According to The New York Post, Rickers Island is getting their own cell phone sniffing dog. These dogs which coast $ 6,000 are able to zero in on lithium batteries, chargers and earpieces.

How are they trained to do that? When asked, Sharman Stein, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Correction, "declined to provide details about the dogs or their training -- refusing even to disclose the name of the new recruit. She cited “security reasons.’’

Well, we know the name of first cell phone sniffing dog, his name was Murphy. He was an English Springer Spaniel who made his debut at Norwich prison in 2006.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011 India. Jail inmates go on hunger strike to protest raids on mobile phones

The Central Prison of Coimbatore witnessed a hunger protest by over 350 inmates on Thursday in response to a massive crackdown on those convicts who use mobile phones. Times of India reports.

According to prison officials, successive raids for contraband goods had made some prisoners furious. They turned against the prison authorities for seizing the banned materials. On Wednesday night, over 350 convict prisoners from 3, 4, 5 and 8 blocks of the central prison had started their hunger protest.

SEPTEMBER 26, 2011 Toy helicopter full of mobile phones fails to make prison drop

A remote-controlled helicopter that crashed near a prison in Ratchaburi in Thailand was being used to smuggle mobile phones and phone parts to inmates, police said yesterday, according to Asia One.

Seven mobile phones, four satellite mobile phones, a number of SIM cards, eight mobile phone batteries and three mobile phone screens were found among the wreckage of the helicopter, Ratchaburi provincial police said.

Police said the wreckage of the remote-controlled chopper was found 500 meters from Khaobin Central Prison, but there was no sign of its operator.

The objects intended for smuggling were stored inside a shockproof box attached beneath the helicopter, they said.

Related: - Police in Brazil foiled a plot in 2009 to smuggle mobile phones into a high-security prison using a remotely-controlled model helicopter.

MAY 17, 2011 Jail solves cell phone problem: Landlines in every cell with restricted numbers.

Phones smuggled in prisons are a recurring issue all over the word, with stories of inmates using the phones to carry on their business from the inside. But accessing phone booths in jail - too few for too many - leads to violence amongst inmates, frustrated not to be able to reach their families.

But now, reports The Guardian, an English prison has come up with a brilliant yet simple idea:

At Lowdham Grange, a category-B prison in Nottingham, prisoners can make phone calls from landlines in their cells 24 hours a day. Prisoners there submit a list of numbers to be approved, then pay in advance for their calls, which can be monitored.

"The introduction of in-cell telephony at Lowdham Grange was followed by significant improvements in prison security, including a marked reduction in attempts to smuggle mobile phones into the establishment," says Vicky O'Dea, prisons operations director at Serco. "The number of prisoners failing random mandatory drug tests also fell following the introduction of the scheme."

APRIL 22, 2011 California bill to rid prisons of smuggled cell phones shelved over costs

In most states, if you smuggle a cell phone into a prison, you’ll end up spending time in prison - but not in California, according to SCPR.

California has no law to keep contraband cell phones from inmates. Law enforcement officials and most lawmakers agree California needs one, but it’s unlikely to pass this year - because it costs too much.

... Deputy Corrections Director Richard Subia says prison staff confiscated 11,000 cell phones from inmates last year. "We’ve found them in walls, put down inside of walls, inside of toilets, in peanut butter, in garlic..." Subia says you’d be surprised.

Subia says prison visitors, men and women, young and old, smuggle phones to inmates. So does a full spectrum of prison workers. "We had an officer that we stopped in one of our Northern California prisons who said he made $100,000 one year for bringing in cell phones."

The Department of Corrections fires staff that smuggle cell phones into prisons. But the Attorney General can’t prosecute them or the inmates that use the phones unless a phone was used to commit a crime. State Senator Alex Padilla (D-San Fernando Valley) says that’s not good enough.

Padilla told the Senate Appropriation Committee last week, "There are no consequences either for the inmates who are caught with cell phones and there is no consequence for either a visitor or an employee who is caught smuggling cell phones in, and that is unacceptable."

Padilla was arguing for a bill he authored to make it a misdemeanor to smuggle cell phones into a California prison. Anyone convicted would get six months in jail and up to a $5,000 fine, per phone. Padilla’s bill would also add extra time to the sentences of inmates found with contraband phones – but reducing good time credits.

But that’s why the Senate Appropriations Committee shelved the measure. The Department of Finance estimates the longer sentences could cost up to $50,000 more per year, per inmate.

APRIL 5, 2011 Beirut. Power supply to the prison shut down to prevent inmates from recharging cell phones

According to Gulf News, security forces stormed Roumieh Prison in Beirut on Tuesday where three prison guards were being detained by inmates who have been rioting since the weekend demanding an amnesty and better conditions.

The power supply to the prison had been cut off to prevent inmates from recharging cell phones introduced illegally.

MARCH 23, 2011 Bill to bar prison cellphones passes key vote in California Senate

After adding the threat of jail time for prison workers caught supplying cellphones to inmates, the Public Safety Committee approves the bill (SB 26 Padilla), sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima). The Los Angeles Times reports.

A proposed law against taking cellphones into California prisons passed a key vote Tuesday, but the measure would exempt prison employees — considered a main source of phones used to arrange crimes from behind bars — from screening by metal detectors as they go to work.

Requiring prison guards to stand in line for airport-like security checks would cost the state millions, according to legislative analysts. That is because members of the politically powerful corrections officers union are paid for "walk time" — the minutes it takes to get from their cars, or the front gate, to their posts inside the prisons.

... In 2009, a corrections officer garnered $150,000 in a single year by smuggling phones to prisoners. He was fired but was not prosecuted because it is not against the law to take cellphones into prison, although it is a violation of prison rules for inmates to possess them

FEBRUARY 16, 2011 Ways to keep inmates from using cell phones

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on prison officials trying to crack down on the use of cell phone by inmates.

California prison officials confiscated nearly 7,000 cell phones in 2009 and nearly 11,000 last year. Some of those phones were used to arrange more crimes.

Part of the problem is that there aren't any real consequences, beyond job loss, for people who are caught smuggling the phones into prisoners. One prison guard made $150,000 in a year selling 150 phones to inmates, according to a 2009 state inspector general's report. There are legislative efforts under way to create penalties like fines - SB26, from state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima (Los Angeles County), is one of them - but a fine isn't punishment enough.

The threat of jail time might be a better deterrent.

There are efforts to subject the guards to searches or metal detectors - but because the state pays for guards to walk from the front gate to their stations, legislative analysts estimate that searches could cost $1.3 million annually. When Jerry Brown renegotiates the prison guard union contract, that provision has to change.

If the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does it right, a better solution may lie in a technological system that blocks unauthorized cell phone signals. The program has worked well in Mississippi, and officials are going to test it here. The key? Finding a way to fund the system without breaking the state budget.

FEBRUARY 7, 2011 Colombia catches girl 'smuggling 74

Prison officials in Colombia say they caught an 11-year-old girl visiting a jailed relative with 74 mobile phones and a revolver taped to her back. The guards became suspicious when they saw what they described as irregular shapes underneath the girl's jumper.

FEBRUARY 3, 2011 Charles Manson found with another cell phone

For the second time, Charles Manson has been found with a cell phone in prison, according MSNBC. An investigation is under way to determine how the cell phone was smuggled into the prison and into Manson's cell.

In December, the infamous convicted murderer had a LG flip phone hidden under his mattress, which was found by prison officials.

Manson used the phone to make calls and send text messages to people in California, New Jersey, Florida and British Columbia, Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections, told the Los Angeles Times in December.

JANUARY 10, 2011 Cell Phones in Prison: A Former Inmate Explains the Real Deal

Interesting insight from an inmate on cell phones in jail. From New Times Blog and The NY Times.

Many of the phones are simply tossed over prison walls, and the phone bills are paid for by families.

"Almost everybody has a phone," said Mike, 33, an inmate at Smith State Prison in Georgia who, like other prisoners interviewed for the NY Times, asked that his full name not be used for fear of retaliation. "Almost every phone is a smartphone. Almost everybody with a smartphone has a Facebook."

The real crime is the inflated cost of calls, which force concerned prisoners to opt for illicit forms of communication:

"The real cost of a call is pennies, but prisons make a huge profit from inmate phones. Most inmates can't afford to stay in touch with family. That is the root cause of the cell phone problem in prisons."

JANUARY 3, 2011 Outlawed, Cellphones Are Thriving in Prisons

The New York Times on how Technology is changing life inside prisons across the country at the same rapid-fire pace it is changing life outside. A smartphone hidden under a mattress is the modern-day file inside a cake.

Although prison officials have long battled illegal cellphones, smartphones have changed the game. With Internet access, a prisoner can call up phone directories, maps and photographs for criminal purposes, corrections officials and prison security experts say. Gang violence and drug trafficking, they say, are increasingly being orchestrated online, allowing inmates to keep up criminal behavior even as they serve time.

The Georgia , for instance, was about things prisoners often complain about: They are not paid for their labor. Visitation rules are too strict. Meals are bad.

But the technology they used to voice their concerns was new.

Inmates punched in text messages and assembled e-mail lists to coordinate simultaneous protests, including work stoppages, with inmates at other prisons. Under pseudonyms, they shared hour-by-hour updates with followers on Facebook and Twitter.

They communicated with their advocates, conducted news media interviews and monitored coverage of the strike.

DECEMBER 17, 2010 Nevada Prisons Seek Approval To Trace Inmate Cell Phones

Just recently, Charles Manson was caught with a cell phone under his mattres, which he used to call unidentified people in 4 different States. Now Nevada's Corrections Department will try and get legislation passed next year to allow state prisons to trace calls on cell phones that have been smuggled into jail.

DECEMBER 12, 2010 Prisoners Coordinate Strike in Georgia thanks to cell phones.

In a protest apparently assembled largely through a network of banned cellphones, inmates across at least six prisons in Georgia have been on strike since Thursday, calling for better conditions and compensation, several inmates and an outside advocate said. The New York Times reports.

... Several inmates, who used cellphones to call The Times from their cells, said they found out about the protest from text messages and did not know whether specific individuals were behind it.

Inmates reaching out to the press by smuggled cell phones, definitely a new trend. Just last week, a British prisoner was able to not only get hold of a mobile phone and use it to video other crimes taking place, but was also able to then pass them to a journalist working for the Sky News TV channel. cf Prisoner uses mobile to video security lapses and boredoom inside jail.

DECEMBER 7, 2010 Prisoner Uses Mobile Phone to Video Security Lapses Inside Jail

We've heard a lot about prisoners getting hold of cell phones and what they do with them, but this story takes the cake. A British prisoner was able to not only get hold of a mobile phone and use it to video other crimes taking place, but was also able to then pass them to a journalist working for the Sky News TV channel. [via Cellular News]

The phone was allegedly purchased from a corrupt prison official at Bullingdon prison in Oxfordshire by prisoner Michael Long who then used it over several weeks to make clandestine video recordings of activities in the prison.

The videos showed poor prison security, the ease with which illegal drugs were conveyed into the jail and a lack of training and rehabilitation for the prisoners before their release.

Long told Sky News that he hoped to raise awareness about the lack of rehabilitation facilities for offenders in Bullingdon, saying: "Where's the rehabilitation? There's no training courses in this prison. I've been here a year, and all I've done is lie in bed."