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.
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.
California prison inmates caught with cellphones will face more time behind bars, and those smuggling the devices in from outside could also be locked up, under a measure signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The Los Angeles Times reports.
The new law will take away up to 90 days of good-behavior credits from convicts caught with the devices. Visitors and prison employees found trying to smuggle them into prison face misdemeanor charges with penalties of up to six months in jail and fines of $5,000 for each one confiscated.
About 10,700 of the phones were confiscated in state prisons last year; offenders included mass murderer Charles Manson.
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.
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.
Governor Martin O’Malley today announced that Maryland has received $350,000 in federal funds to intensify the effort to tackle the problem of cell phones in Baltimore prisons. The competitive federal grant is designed to fund “innovative strategies for confronting emerging or chronic systemic issues.” The BayNet reports.
... This grant is the latest development in the State’s innovative and aggressive efforts to tackle this issue, including training its own cell phone sniffing K-9 Units, investing $1 million into prison entrance security technology, and developing correctional intelligence efforts and cell phone data extraction and analysis capabilities.
Dozens of Americans who claim to have been made ill by wi-fi and mobile phones have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia. The BBC reports.
More than five billion people use mobile phones worldwide and advances in wireless technology make it increasingly difficult to escape the influence of mobile devices. But while most Americans seem to embrace continuous connectivity, some believe it's making them physically ill.
Diane Schou is one of an estimated 5% of Americans who believe they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), which they say is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields typically created by cell phones, wi-fi and other electronic equipment.
Symptoms range from acute headaches, skin burning, muscle twitching and chronic pain.
Her symptoms were so severe that she abandoned her family farm in the state of Iowa and moved to Green Bank, West Virginia - a tiny village of 143 residents in the heart of the Allegheny Mountains.
Green Bank is part of the US Radio Quiet Zone, where wireless is banned across 13,000 sq miles (33,000 sq km) to prevent transmissions interfering with a number of radio telescopes in the area.
The largest is owned by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and enables scientists to listen to low-level signals from different places in the universe.
As a result of the radio blackout, the Quiet Zone has become a haven for people like Diane, desperate to get away from wireless technology.
CNN reports that over the last three years, the number of contraband cell phones seized in federal prisons and minimum-security facilities has quadrupled, according to a report issued by the General Accountability Office.
In 2008, 1,774 cell phones were seized. By the end of 2010 that number had skyrocketed to 8,656. The report looked at the issue in federal prisons as well as institutions in eight states. The numbers were not complete for all the states, but in California 900 phones were discovered in 2007 and a whopping 10,700 were found in 2010.
... The report was completed in July but an edited version was not made available to the public until Tuesday. Details about how inmates manage to get the phones and the technologies used to detect them were taken out. But the document does say the Bureau of Prisons has tried out a radio frequency sensor system in two institutions. The sensors show when a cell phone is being used and shows the approximate location of the phone on a computer screen.
Thousands of inmates in California's state prisons have access to contraband mobile phones and are updating their Facebook accounts, and now the state is asking the social network to close them down. NBC Bay Area reports.
In 2006, that number was only 260. Prisoners are apparently using those phones to surf the Web and update Facebook accounts, so now the department is working with Facebook to shut down accounts that have been updated since the prisoner's incarceration.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
The New York Times on how echnology 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 prison strike, 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-- 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.
Security Products 
According to 
California prison inmates caught with cellphones will face more time behind bars, and those smuggling the devices in from outside could also be locked up, under a measure signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown. 
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 
Dozens of Americans who claim to have been made ill by wi-fi and mobile phones have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia. The 
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. 
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 
According to 
After adding the threat of jail time for prison workers caught supplying cellphones to inmates, the Public Safety Committee approves the bill (
Interesting insight from an inmate on cell phones in jail. From 
Following 
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.
As cellphone jamming is, for the most part, still out of the question in US prisons, 
