Lock Down on Cell Phone Contraband

CCA supports the Safe Communications Act

On October 7, 2008, Texas Sen. John Whitmire returned a missed phone call to someone he thought was a personal friend.

But upon speaking with the caller, he realized it was not a friend but a death row inmate. Richard Tabler, who had been convicted of murder, was contacting him from a cell phone that had been illegally smuggled into the high-security Texas correctional facility.

"In subsequent cell phone conversations, inmate Tabler discussed my two daughters, where they lived and other details that he wanted me to know he knew," explained Whitmire in a July 15, 2009 presentation titled Contraband Cell Phones in Texas Prisons, Presentation to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Through a sting operation, officials confiscated Tabler's illegal cell phone and arrested his mother and sister on felony charges of assisting an inmate to obtain a contraband cell phone in prison. Whitmire's experience is just one example of how cell phone contraband can be dangerous.

"Cell phones have quickly become a growing area of contraband concern for our corrections professionals who are committed to keeping our nation's prisons and communities safe," explains CCA president and CEO Damon Hininger." We need to look no further than the several recent examples of how contraband cell phones have played roles in serious criminal activity."

For example, in Tennessee and Texas, individuals found guilty of smuggling cell phone contraband into a correctional facility will be charged with a felony crime and may be sentenced between two and 10 years in prison.

"In most states where CCA facilities operate, it is a crime to bring a cell phone into a facility with the intention to give it to an inmate," explains Cole Carter, CCA assistant general counsel, Operations. "It is prosecuted harshly in many states."

Reducing the Threat

To aggressively search for and identify cells phones before they enter into the secure confines of a facility, CCA has begun several new measures and enhanced existing ways to increase ways cell phones are identified.

• A new front entry policy, which identifies positions companywide and with external agencies permitted to have a cell phone in a facility.
  
• All facilities will have front-entry metal detectors and partial scanners, much like those at the airport by the end of 2010, though most CCA facilities have the equipment already. CCA is piloting the use of cell phone detection K-9s at two facilities – Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Miss. and Correctional Treatment Facility in Washington, D.C. – to identify if this practice will be effective in uncovering unauthorized cell phones.
  
• Additionally, CCA fully supports the Safe Prisons Communications Act, introduced by United States Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. The bill will allow correctional facilities to operate a wireless jamming device with permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
  

"We must provide corrections officers with a comprehensive solution that includes the tools necessary to prevent the use of phones when they evade detection and discovery," explained Sen. Hutchinson in an August 7, 2009 article in the Capitol Comment titled "Cell Phones in Prisons Mean Business as Usual for Convicted Criminals."

"To that end, law enforcement officers, corrections professionals, governors and others working to address this problem have asked Congress and the FCC for authority to use cell phone signal jamming equipment," the senator wrote.

The bill, also supported by the American Correctional Association (ACA) and the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA), has passed the Senate and is now in the House awaiting further action.

"CCA absolutely supports the Safe Prisons Communications Act," explains Bobby Phillips, CCA director of Security. "Jamming the signal is the ultimate goal. Then cell phones become obsolete in the facility and within some distance outside the facility as well."

CCA is on the leading edge in using K-9s to detect cell phones. Currently, two facilities have cell phone sniffing K-9s and others are currently being trained. Cell phones have unique scents that differentiate them from other electronic devices.

"This is a new approach across the nation," says Chuck Mason, CCA K9 commander. "It's been very productive for CCA. When doing a cell search, it takes two employees about 30 minutes, while a K-9 can do it in just minutes."

Source, Spring 2010