Prisoners Run Gangs, Plan Escapes, and Even Order Hits With Smuggled Cellphones

[Are_grits_groceries]

In his 25-plus years as a Texas state senator, John Whitmire had never received a phone call like this one.

"I know your daughters' names," said a nasal voice. "I know how old they are. I know where they live." Then the caller recited the young women's names, ages, and addresses. The senator, sitting at an antique rolltop desk in his Houston office, gripped the handset tighter.

Whitmire is the bald-headed, blunt-talking chair of the state senate's Criminal Justice Committee, a law-and-order man who displays an engraved pistol in his office. But that call last October 7, he says, "scared the hell out of me." Richard Tabler, the man on the other end of the line, had murdered at least two people and possibly four. He was a prisoner on Texas' death row, supposedly locked safely away. But from the narrow bunk of his solitary cell an hour's drive north of Houston, Tabler had reached out and touched one of the Lone Star State's most powerful politicians with a smuggled Motorola cell phone.

Richard Tabler photographed at the Texas prison where he is on death row.


In one prison monitored by signal sensors, "the maximum-security sector looked like a telemarketing center."
<snip>
Inmates aren't allowed to have cell phones in any US prison, let alone on death row. But the 21st century's ubiquitous communications tools are nonetheless turning up by the thousands in lockups not just in Texas but across the US and around the world. Last year alone, officials confiscated 947 phones in Maryland, some 2,000 handsets and accessories in South Carolina, and 2,800 mobiles in California.

The presence of cell phones is changing the very meaning of imprisonment. Incarceration is supposed to isolate criminals, keeping them away from one another and the rest of us so they can't cause any more harm. But with a wireless handset, an inmate can slip through walls and locked doors at will and maintain a digital presence in the outside world. Prisoners are using voice calls, text messages, email, and handheld Web browsers to taunt their victims, intimidate witnesses, run gangs, and organize escapes—including at least one incident in Tennessee in which a guard was killed. An Indiana inmate doing 40 years for arson made harassing calls to a 23-year-old woman he'd never met and phoned in bomb threats to the state fair for extra laughs.
<snip>
Prisoners have always been able to communicate with the outside world, through whispered conversations with visitors, smuggled notes, and a litany of more ingenious methods. But the ease with which they can do it today is chilling. During a hearing on the activities of Blood gang members imprisoned in New Jersey, a state police officer testified that he listened in on a 45-minute conference call that linked Bloods in three different lockups with three others on the streets. And then there are all the worrisome things a prisoner might look up online, like recipes for making explosives, tips for faking medical conditions, or the home addresses of, say, a politician's daughters—not to mention guards and various enemies.

Consider the case of a, a 38-year-old Maryland resident who had the bad luck to witness a street murder in Baltimore and the rare courage to agree to testify against the accused killer, Patrick Byers. According to prosecutors, Byers acquired a phone while awaiting trial in Baltimore's City Detention Center. He obtained Lackl's name, address, and phone number and allegedly texted that information to a friend on the outside, along with an offer of $2,500 to get rid of Lackl. On July 2, 2007, the friend rounded up a couple of thugs and drove out to Lackl's modest suburban home, where authorities say the crew blasted him to death with a .44 Magnum.
<snip>
Senator Whitmire has a more straightforward approach. "Jam the damn things!" he bellowed at a recent Texas senate hearing. Sounds obvious, but there are problems with this tactic, too. For one thing, it's illegal. The 1934 Communications Act prohibits anyone except the federal government from interfering with radio transmissions, which now include cell calls.

At the urging of frustrated state officials, a bill was introduced in Congress in January that would let the FCC grant waivers for jamming in prisons. But the telecom industry is fighting it. Jamming inmates' phones would block calls by prison staff and other paying customers, they say. There are also technical shortcomings: A few layers of tinfoil can shield a phone from the jamming signal.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-06/ff_prisonphones?currentPage=1

Well this gives a new meaning to reach out and touch someone.

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. One woulda thunk that the most "powerful" nation on earth, with so many incarcerated

.
.
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could figure out how to stop stuff getting smuggled into jails?

Well - guess not

They let the terrorists fly two of their own planes into the Twin Towers

and IRAQ was a threat?????

USA is it's own worst enemy -

Them 100's of bases and thousands of military spread around the globe ain't gonna do them much good when someone hits them on their own ground

I betcha over 75% of their troops and forces aren't anywhere NEAR the USA

Criminals have been running gangs for almost a century out of US jails

and the USA has trillions of dollars in military/defense assets around the globe

but not at home

hmmmm

:freak:

[annabanana]

2. Why does Verizon hate America?. . . . n/t

[TheMightyFavog]

3. The only other solution I could think of is making the facility into a giant Faraday cage

But that would be extremely cost prohibitive.

It might be cheaper to renovate existing cells.