Petition to FCC to Block Cellular Signals
27 states join call to block cellular signals. Full story and a copy of the petition are available on The Post and Courier.
The state [SC] Corrections Department’s effort to jam cell phone calls to and from inmates raises the question: If prison officials can’t keep cell phones out of inmates’ hands, what else can’t they keep out?Inmates use cell phones to coordinate deliveries with their friends and family in the middle of the night or the dark morning hours. The person on the outside lobs drugs, alcohol, tobacco and other contraband over the 12-foot or higher fences and into the state’s 18 mid-level and maximum security prison yards.
The criminals’ secret deliveries come in bags, hollowed-out Nerf balls and plastic footballs carved open, stuffed with goodies and then shot over the single or double-layer fences with potato guns or other rocket launchers.
Lack of money and manpower and an outdated federal law sit at the center of the problem that Corrections Director Jon Ozmint said sprouted when X-ray machines and metal detectors were installed in recent years in the jails that house the most dangerous criminals.
Ozmint is at the forefront of a nationwide push to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to allow states to jam cell phone signals in prisons. Twenty-six other states have signed a petition that the S.C. Department of Corrections submitted to the FCC on Monday.
The jamming technology, which would cost about $250,000 for each prison, works by eliminating the cell phone signal. It is specific enough that it won’t interfere with phones outside the facility that is being blocked and does not affect law enforcement radios, Ozmint said.
The jamming technology is outlawed by the 1934 Federal Communications Act. Ozmint said the FCC has not responded to the agency’s request to jam the signals. Federal law enforcement agencies, however, are exempt from the ban and are permitted to use the technology. Ozmint said he also is pursing a possible congressional solution.
It is paramount that the state’s jails and detention centers be allowed to use the technology, Ozmint said. If an inmate has access to a cell phone, he said, he guarantees that that inmate is up to no good.
The risk for people on the outside who are delivering contraband items such as tobacco and cell phones to prisoners is low, Ozmint said. Those items are legal to possess in public settings, and the prison system is so underfunded that only one officer is assigned to patrol the perimeter of each prison, he said.
Unless the officer catches the person in the act of launching the package over the fence, it is unlikely that person will get caught, Ozmint said.
Between 1999 and 2004, the agency’s staff, including prison guards, was cut from 7,200 to 5,800 as a result of legislators balancing the budget. The ratio is now one corrections officer for every nine inmates.
But the cost of the smuggled cell phones is high. Elsewhere in the country, prisoners have used cell phones to threaten and, in two cases, kill witnesses, Ozmint said.
The agency has reviewed other ideas, such as netting on the tops of the fences, phone detection devices and search dogs, but Ozmint said no alternatives are as cost-effective and efficient as the jamming technology.
In 2008, about 2,000 cell phones were confiscated from the state prisons.
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