Lauderdale County MI can now use a portion of the money collected from inmate telephone service for the local jail ministry program.

Gov. Haley Barbour signed a bill earlier this month that authorized use of the money. The bill took effect when Barbour signed it.
Lauderdale County’s Good News Jail and Prison Ministry provides volunteers and a full time chaplain to participate in non-denominational worship with inmates. It has been funded by local donations.   The bill allows the county to use up to $25,000 from the inmate phone service for the jail ministry.

vericatrajkova Faith-based Programs, Inmate Programs, Inmate Telephones, MS Lauderdale County, Mississippi

Texas prison inmates are making routine phone calls for the first time.  The Texas prison board was told Friday the first of a planned systemwide program of telephone service to be available to most inmates began working this week at the Henley State Jail in Dayton, east of Houston. The system is being phased in this year throughout the 112 units of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the nation’s second-largest corrections agency.  Story from the Houston Chronicle.

Three more prisons — Vance, in Fort Bend County; Luther, in Grimes County; and Hobby, in Falls County — are to have phone service next week and should be among 13 brought up in April. Another 31 become active in May and the entire system should be up by the end of September, said Paul Cooper, director and general manager of corrections markets for Embarq Corp., the Overland Park, Kan.-based company that last year was awarded a seven-year contract with the Texas prison agency [to use Securus Technologies software] …

The new system will allow inmates up to 15 minutes per call to friends and family on an approved list of visitors. Calls to crime victims or the victims’ families will be barred … Phone privileges won’t extend to about 36,000 inmates with disciplinary problems, gang affiliations or those on death row … State prison officials long had opposed expanded phone access, fearing inmates could maintain their criminal connections to the outside world. But officials say technology has improved so the calls can be monitored, recorded and limited to those on the list of approved contacts.

There is considerably more detail and background in the full article at the Houston Chronicle.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, Texas

A five-year-old Belgian Malinois named Caesar has completed training to become the first phone-sniffing dog in the California prison system.  Report from News 10.

Caesar’s handler, Sgt. Wayne Conrad, said cell phones emit an odor distinct from other electronic devices. Conrad planted several phones in a prison building and in an individual cell, and Caesar found all of them. Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia are also using dogs to detect cell phones in prison.

Correctional officers at California State Prison, Solano have confiscated more than 2,000 cell phones in the past three years, according to Lt. Robin Bond of the prison’s security and investigation unit …

Associate Director Richard Subia said he would seek funding for additional search dogs if the experience with Caesar proves worthwhile.

vericatrajkova California, Inmate Telephones

This report from the Associated Press:

Police say inmates are using carrier pigeons to smuggle cell phones onto a prison farm in southeastern Brazil.

Police inspector Celso Soramiglio says that guards at a prison near the city of Sorocaba caught a pigeon last Wednesday with components of a small cell phone inside a bag tied to one of its legs.  A day later, another pigeon was found with a bag containing a cell phone charger.   The birds apparently were bred and raised inside the prison, smuggled out, outfitted with the cell phone parts and then released to fly back.

Soramiglio noted that pigeons “instinctively fly back home — always.”  He says police photographed the pigeons and then released them.

vericatrajkova Americas, Brazil, INTERNATIONAL, Inmate Telephones

Authorities say they are closing in on at least four groups of convicts and their supporters — both inside prison and out — who are believed to have helped smuggle dozens of cell phones into Texas’ death row. And with arrests near in the high-profile investigation, details are surfacing about contraband trafficking inside state prisons.  The Austin American-Statesman has a long and detailed report of which this is just highlight:

The cell phone that condemned killer Richard Lee Tabler used to call a state senator probably was not his. It’s believed to have been sneaked into the maximum-security Polunsky Unit near Livingston in East Texas by a convict who probably then “brokered” it to Tabler and other inmates for favors and cash.  Instead of the phone being smuggled by a single corrupt guard, as originally thought, investigators now say it and dozens of others might have been put in the hands of Texas’ worst killers by an intricate network of supporters and their families who used code words, fake names, money transfers, prearranged drop sites and even a secret compartment at the bottom of a garbage can to get the phones inside what is supposed to be the most secure part of Texas’ prison system.

Investigators say they believe several organized groups are involved in the trafficking.   “From the time someone puts up the money to get the phone for an inmate, there may be six to eight sets of hands involved with that phone, six to eight different people who do one thing or another,” said the prison system’s top investigator, Inspector General John Moriarty. “It’s a convoluted, complicated network that’s very difficult to trace … The demand is the problem. It’s huge” …

The current asking price for a cell phone, according to inmates and their friends: about $3,100, up from $2,100 last fall, before Tabler’s calls to Whitmire and others exploded in headlines.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, Texas

Using voice-identity technology once used to order U.S. military air strikes, Texas on March 30 will begin allowing prison convicts to make legal phone calls for the first time — on old-fashioned, hard-wired handsets that promise to earn taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.  As reported by the Postcards Blog section of the Austin Statesman-American:

Texas is the last state in the nation to allow an inmate phone system. Prison officials announced [Friday] that the first eight phones will be activated at the Byrd Unit, the prison system’s primary intake and assessment unit in Huntsville. Within a month, five additional prisons will get hundreds more. Only outgoing calls will be allowed. All of Texas’ 112 state prisons should have inmate phones ringing by September, when the final lockups are to be hooked up …

Stewart said the system will allow for collect calls, or for calls pre-paid from an account into which family members can transfer money or convicts can transfer funds from their trust accounts.  Inmates’ family members will be able to sign up online.   More than a million people are expected to register to receive calls from the 140,000 convicts who will be eligible to make them …

Prison officials acknowledged that calls could be answered by someone not approved to receive them, but they insisted such calls would be quickly detected by other security measures being built into the system. All calls will be recorded, and the calls will be monitored on a sporadic basis by prison investigators, gang specialists and even wardens. Wardens can turn off all phones if a problem arises, officials said … Added John Moriarty, the prison system’s inspector general: “I think we’ll have the most secure inmate phone system in the country.”

The state-of-the-art system being implemented by Embarq in Texas is by Securus Technologies, parent company of Syscon Justice Systems.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, Texas

The good news for Monroe County PA Correctional Facility inmates is they will pay less for phone calls. The bad news, as far as inmates are concerned, is that it will be easier for law enforcement to detect discussions of illegal activities.

The Monroe County Commissioners agreed Wednesday to award a new inmate phone system contract … including a new capability to pick out key words from recorded conversations. That feature will make life easier for detectives at the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office who routinely review inmate recordings. It’s legal and admissible in court. When they make calls, inmates are warned their conversations will be recorded. Calls to attorneys about their criminal cases are exempt; inmates provide staff with a list of those numbers.

Currently detectives spend hours each month listening to calls recorded on software. But the new system is capable of picking out key words, such as references to drug use or possible threats of physical harm.  “It will search any kind of street name for drugs,” MCCF Sgt. Will Searfoss said during a Monroe County Prison Board meeting earlier this month. “It learns the dialect of the prisoner.”

… The recording systems — the current one and the approved upgrade — don’t cost taxpayers anything. It is paid for from inmate funds posted to cover phone calls and other items they purchase at the Snydersville jail.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, PA Monroe County

Buoyed by the successful test of cell-phone jamming technology Friday in a South Carolina prison, Texas officials confirmed Tuesday that they are working on a similar demonstration in the Lone Star State.

House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden said he has requested a test of the technology at a Texas prison “as soon as it can be worked out.”  The proposed date and site: Dec. 18 at the Travis County state jail in Austin. “It would take a change in federal law to allow jamming such as this, but I would hope there could be some action to change the law sooner rather than later,” Madden said. “Federal law gives federal agencies the authority to jam cell signals, and I think it’s strange the states could have inmates just as dangerous as the feds, and we can’t jam the cell signals.”

The issue has been a hot topic after condemned double murderer Richard Lee Tabler made cell phone calls from death row to state Sen. John Whitmire and [a] reporter last month. Tabler, his mother and his sister were busted on contraband charges after Whitmire — who chairs the powerful Senate committee that oversees prisons — reported the calls.  Eighteen cell phones and related paraphernalia have been found on death row since Gov. Rick Perry ordered a zero-tolerance policy on contraband in state prisons, a move that brought the first lockdown and coordinated sweep for contraband in all of Texas’ 112 state prisons in a decade …

[T]he Federal Communications Commission recently warned that tests like the one in South Carolina are illegal under a law that is 73 years old.  Based on Friday’s test, Josh Gelinas, a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said corrections officials there plan to petition the FCC for permission to conduct a pilot program using the technology. Gelinas and Doyle said Friday’s test jammed cell phone traffic in a contained area inside a South Carolina prison but did not interfere with radio traffic between correctional officers or cell traffic outside the prison.”It was very successful,” Gelinas said.

Much more information available from the Austin American-Statesman.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, South Carolina, Texas

An intense shakedown of Texas’s 155,000 prison inmates yielded 13 mobile phones and 12 phone chargers in a growing scandal over prohibited telephones being smuggled in to inmates.

Authorities charged a second person Wednesday, accusing her of being involved in a death-row inmate’s possession of a phone.   Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials also said officers have seized at least one subscriber identity module, or SIM card, a postage-stamp-size tool that plugs into cell phones and transfers information from one phone to another.  A phone and a charger were found in the ceiling of a shower area in the death row building at the Polunsky Unit outside Livingston, agency spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said.

The 111 prisons in the nation’s second-largest corrections system have been locked down since Monday evening after Gov. Rick Perry ordered agency officials to ferret out any contraband.   The order followed the disclosure that death row inmate Richard Tabler had made threatening calls to a state senator and had shared his illegal cell phone with at least nine of his fellow inmates.  The 10 condemned prisoners made 2,800 calls in nearly a month and the inmate’s mother, Lorraine, was arrested Monday and jailed on suspicion of paying for phone minutes. It is illegal to give inmates prohibited items like mobile phones or the minutes needed to use them.

The systemwide lockdown means inmates are confined to their cells and normal visits with relatives have been suspended. Employees and visitors also are subjected to searches with hand-held metal detectors. Lyons said it could take three weeks to complete the search of large prisons, some of which — including Polunsky, where death-row inmates are housed — have more than 2,000 inmates.  Even before the lockdown, Polunsky Unit officers conducting searches after Tabler was caught with his phone found two other cell phones in the prison, officials said.  And investigators had closed or were working on 19 cases of prohibited phones or phone components on death row and some 700 cases systemwide this year alone before the Tabler case broke …

John Moriarty, the department’s inspector general, blamed a handful of corrupt officers for smuggling phones.  A phone can command a bribe of $2,000 — nearly a month’s salary for a rookie corrections officer — and be used to coordinate with gangs on the outside. The same system is used to smuggle in drugs and cigarettes, he said.  “All it takes is one (bad officer) and you’ve got a big problem,” Moriarty said.

More details in the International Herald Trribune.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, Texas

South Carolina DOC wants to jam cell phone signals in prisons to prevent convicts from committing further crimes. There’s one significant problem with the plan: It’s against the law.

The struggle to stop cell phone use in prisons — where some experts say the devices have become a new form of cash — has states trying old-fashioned cell searches, sophisticated body scanners, even dogs trained to sniff out batteries and memory chips. South Carolina’s state prison chief, Jon Ozmint, wants to add to those tactics with existing technology that blocks cell signals.  Standing in his way is the federal Communications Act, which prevents states from using jammers or otherwise interfering with federal airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission can give federal agencies the authority to use such jammers. But there’s no such provision for state and local law enforcement …

Experts say the consequences of not using jammers can be dire. Perhaps the most glaring example took place in Maryland last summer, when Baltimore resident Carl Lackl identified a shooting suspect. Authorities say the 38-year-old father was gunned down outside his home after the suspect used a cell phone to order the hit from behind bars. In South Carolina, Ozmint blames illegal cell phones for most of the state’s prison escapes. In one 2005 case, cell phones were found on two inmates who escaped a maximum security prison in Columbia by hiding in a trash truck.  In Texas this week, prison officials arrested the mother of a death row inmate on charges she paid for minutes on a cell phone that had been smuggled to her condemned son. The inmate shared the phone with nine other inmates and called a state senator to say he knew the lawmaker’s daughters’ names, authorities said. The governor’s office said a corrections officer had been bribed to get the cell phone to the inmate …

[D] eterrence measures might become moot if officials could use the jammers to prevent unmonitored calls from ever happening within prison walls, as Ozmint hopes to do in South Carolina … Ozmint has invited federal officials and the state’s congressional delegation to come to South Carolina’s maximum-security Lieber Correctional Institution in a few months, where CellAntenna Corp., which manufactures jamming devices, will demonstrate that technology. The devices prevent cell tower signals from ever reaching a phone, effectively blocking all calls. Jammers wouldn’t block calls made from satellite phones, but those would be exponentially more expensive and cumbersome to smuggle into prison.  It’s not clear how much it would cost to outfit South Carolina’s prisons with the jammers, though officials say they’d focus first on installing the technology in maximum-security prisons.

Critics say it’s impossible to contain the jamming technology to one or two buildings, and that using it runs the risk of affecting people using phones nearby.  “You can prevent emergency calls if these jammers are allowed,” said Joe Farren, spokesman for CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group for the wireless industry. “You put signal jammers in, you interfere with critical communications, life and death.” That worry is shared by Zack Kendall, a security specialist for North Carolina’s prison system, who said he doesn’t know whether his prisons would take advantage of signal blocking because it could interfere with internal radio communications …

Ozmint said his officers are stretched thin by a rising prison population and tightening budget constraints. He believes the technology would help him run a safer, more efficient prison system.  “As long as you have human beings in prisons as inmates and employees, and as long as there are human beings on the outside of those prisons, you’re going to have contraband in prison,” Ozmint said. “This is a threat that can be absolutely eliminated.”

Read more on this at the AP.

vericatrajkova Federal Systems, Inmate Telephones, South Carolina, Texas