Even though cell phones are banned inside South Carolina prisons, even for employees, they're very popular inside prison cells. The state Department of Corrections found about one thousand cell phones or cell phone components inside its prisons in the past year, says agency spokesman Josh Gelinas.
Because the department is having such a hard time keeping the cell phones out, it wants to use technology that blocks cell phone signals within prison walls. It can't do that now because blocking cell phone signals is banned by federal law. The agency will demonstrate the technology at a prison in Ridgeville next Friday.
"We're told this technology can triangulate around an institution, a correctional institution, like Lieber in Ridgeville, and block the signal only within that perimeter. It will not affect the cell phone signal of the general public outside the prison walls," Gelinas says.
Even though the department uses X-ray machines and metal detectors and searches visitors, inmates still get cell phones by having friends or family members put them inside a football, another kind of ball or in some other kind of package, and throw it over the fence. Once an inmate has a cell phone, he can coordinate deliveries of drugs, more cell phones, wire cutters or even weapons.
Gelinas says inmates also use them to keep committing crimes, with inmates in maximum security prisons using cell phones to commit credit card fraud.
A death row inmate in Texas used a cell phone to threaten a state senator. An inmate in England was recently convicted of ordering a murder outside prison walls. And two inmates were killed and about 20 more were hurt in Oklahoma prisons during fights officials believe were organized by inmates with cell phones.
Gelinas says jamming cell phone signals would not be dangerous for corrections officers because they don't use cell phones. If there's a problem, they use land-line phones or radios.
But it's up to Congress to decide whether to allow the department to start jamming cell signals. For the demonstration, the department has invited members of the Federal Communications Commission and South Carolina's Congressional delegation. "We're just trying to draw some attention to it, show our federal leaders here in South Carolina that it works and get them to come to our aid and help change the law," Gelinas says.
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