Texas officials plan to test cell phone jamming technology after a prison system lockdown and search turned up hundreds of smuggled mobile devices.
Texas prisons are having a problem with imprisoned thugs getting their hands on cell phones, so instead of making sure no cell phones can get in, which would seem to be a somewhat easy thing to anyone who has visited someone in a prison (everything short of a strip search, let me tell you), they want to jam the signals†. Isn’t that rather like saying they have a problem with guns being smuggled into the prison, so everyone has to wear full body armor? Let’s not bother fixing the security problem, let’s just deal with the symptom!
Why would they be having problems keeping cell phones out of prisons? My first guess would be to look to the guards. Unless the security at maximum security prisons is significantly more lax than at the minimum security prison I visited, I can’t personally imagine one coming in through the front door. Even then, isn’t it still the responsibility of the guards to make sure that disallowed things aren’t allowed in (i.e. these things should be caught at the front door)? Why, yes … it is. So, the problem of cell phones getting into prisoners hands is still on the heads of the guards, even if they are coming in through the front door.
Footnotes- † Jamming cell phone signals, for the record, is a federal crime. The Texas prison system, of course, wants an exemption. [↩]
The state can’t admit to hiring crooked guards, oops, ‘correctional officers,’ or that the working conditions and pay and inbred institutional politics preclude attracting enough qualified staff (because that is a backhanded way of telling the citizens that they don’t pay enough taxes to expect any better services), so they fish about for the quick fix and try to press release it as brilliant and responsible thinking. The irony would be that the same lazy staff that normally spends half their shift on their own phones would suffer along with the inmates. Then again, maybe the inmates-with-phones was just a cover story to justify jamming the guards’ phones, seeing how either inattention or outright collusion is a far greater security threat than letting the cage dwellers talk to their homies, dealers, girlfriends and grandmas.
How else would MS13, the Mexican Mafia, and other such notable gangs leaders run their organizations if not for illegal contraband being smuggled into them. Conversations on all pay phones are recorded, email is read, as are the prisoner’s personal mail. It only takes a few guards to betray their oath, and then it only takes treats and intimidation from the prisoners to cement the agreement. You will continue to cooperate with our request, or we will butcher your family. Your choice.
The stuff has to be coming in with guards. I did some volunteer work once that found me going into a minimum security prison, mostly people with low-level drug charges, multiple DWIs, simple theft and stuff like that. I swear they nearly strip-searched me before allowing me anywhere past the first entrance, and anytime I was anywhere near a prisoner there were cameras everywhere and guards hovering around. There would have been no WAY to get something in on me, and that was minimum security. I’d think at an even tougher place it’d be at least that much scrutiny if not more. So guards and other employees have to be doing it.