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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2014
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TECHNOLOGY
Prisoners' use of smuggled cellphones on the rise
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This undated photo mprovided by the Florida Department of Corrections shows a cellphone and cigarettes that were found inside a camouflage package, January 25, 2014, near an undisclosed Florida state prison.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — They're hidden in babies' diapers, ramen noodle soup packages, footballs, soda cans and even body cavities.
Not drugs or weapons, but cellphones. They're becoming a growing problem in prisons across the country as they are used to make threats, plan escapes and for inmates to continue to make money from illegal activity even while behind bars.
When two murderers serving life sentences escaped from Florida Panhandle prison last fall, a search of their cells turned up a cellphone used to help plan the getaway, drawing attention to the burgeoning problem. It was just one of 4,200 cellphones confiscated by prison officials last year, or 11 per day.
And while prison officials are trying their best to keep cellphones out, it's not such an easy task. Jamming cellphone signals is prohibited by federal law, and it costs more than $1 million each for authorized towers that control what cellphone calls can come in and out of prisons. Some prisons even have to police their own corrections officers who sometimes help inmates receive contraband.
In Texas, a death row inmate made several calls with a cellphone to state Sen. John Whitmire, who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee. Whitmire didn't believe it when he started receiving calls from death row inmate Richard Tabler.
"He held his phone out, I guess outside his cell and there was a very distinct prison noise. He said, 'Did you hear that?' and I said, 'Yup.
That's a prison,' " Whitmire said. "I said, 'How'd you get that phone?' He said, 'I paid $2,100 for it."
The calls continued, and Whitmire had the phone investigated. Tabler's mother was paying the bill and collecting payments from the other prisoners' families. She was arrested for her part in the prison cellphone scheme. Tabler wasn't happy about that and made another call to Whitmire. "He said he was going to have me killed," Whitmire said.
"You may get a prepackaged, sealed ramen noodle soup — and it's completely sealed — the weight seems to be right, but when you open it, there's a cellphone inside," said Timothy Cannon, Florida's deputy corrections secretary.
As corrections departments keep looking for new ways to stop cellphone smuggling, prisoners are finding creative,
new ways to get them in.
and drugs in babies' diapers" during visitations, Cannon said. "If they think you never search an infant child, that will be the next place they go to try to get it in."
Phones have been hidden in the hollowed out centers of large stacks of legal documents. One corrections officer found two liter soda bottles that were used as floats outside a prison. When he pulled them out of a pond, bags containing more than a dozen cellphones each were found tied to them.
"We've found cellphone"
"We have found cellphones in the private area of visitors — I'm talking females and males," said Christopher Epps, head of the Mississippi prison system and president of the American Corrections Association. He said it's not unusual to find three phones in a body cavity.
States are looking for new ways to find cellphones or to prevent their use. Epps said that includes recently installed netting held up by
50-foot poles to keep people from throwing bags over prison fences for prisoners to retrieve.
Federal law prohibits jamming cellphone signals, but Texas, Maryland, California and Mississippi installed towers at some prisons that control what cellphone traffic is allowed. Phone signals reach the tower, but only authorized numbers are then passed through.
It's not something Florida is considering because of the hefty price tag. Each system costs about $1.5 million, and with 49 major prisons, the state doesn't have the money to cover them all.
FUNDS FROM PAGE 1
enjoyed of being the source of breakthroughs." Warren said.
Other forms of funding include industry funding and private funding, but these funds go to applied research, which is in-depth studying of discoveries made in basic research. The University also works to increase these funds and has seen a raise in industry funding from $8.4 million to $13.3 million.
Warren feels that the work being done to increase funding is a good sign for the future
"I think we can turn this around, I'm confident of that," Warren said.
Edited by Kaitlyn Klein
Kev. Dwight Welch, a pastor at Ecumenical Campus Ministries who identifies as gay, said that the bill goes against the values that he believes Christianity is founded upon and raises, the question whether or not people really believe that everybody is made in the image of God.
BILL FROM PAGE 1
"There is a 1970s poster I remember seeing and it said, 'God doesn't make junk.' So when we have legislation that kind of consigns people on that level — and that's whether you're poor, or you're faced with disability, or whatever the criteria is, it feels like you're trying to nullify that
— or failing to recognize the idea of people being made in the image of God."
Edited by Amber Kasselman
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