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TMCNet: Texas explores California solution to smuggled cell phones in prison

[April 19, 2012]

Texas explores California solution to smuggled cell phones in prison

Apr 19, 2012 (Austin American-Statesman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- It's not often that Texas looks to California for much of anything, except to relocate corporate jobs. But a new Golden State deal to curb calls from prisons on smuggled cellphones has state officials exploring a similar system.

Instead of jamming cellphone calls around prisons as Texas officials had earlier proposed, the California system would block outgoing cell calls, Web access and text messages by managing the cellphone signals at prisons -- and allowing only signals from approved numbers to go through.

Jason Clark, a spokesman for the state Department of Criminal Justice, confirmed Wednesday that the agency is working with Century Link -- the private company that operates pay phones inside Texas' 111 state prisons -- to evaluate a similar system for installation in Texas.

"The system would be a managed-access system and does not jam cellphones," Clark said. "Managed access intercepts the outgoing calls and only allows calls from approved numbers. This is legal," Clark said, noting that the Federal Communications Commission prohibits jamming. Texas and other states sought legislation to overturn the prohibition, but cellphone companies -- worried about interference with nonprison signals -- blocked the proposals in Congress.

Smuggled cellphones in Texas prisons have posed a security risk for the past decade. The situation drew headlines and triggered a weeks-long lockdown of the entire state prison system in late 2008 after a death row convict made threatening calls to a state senator and a reporter.

Efforts to curb cellphone smuggling into prisons have come up short, even though the state has spent millions of dollars on screening devices, surveillance cameras, detection devices and even phone-sniffing dogs.

Clark said Texas prison employees last year seized 904 cellphones in prisons or headed there, down from 1,480 three years ago. Prison officials attribute the decline to $60 million in security upgrades.

By contrast, California last year confiscated 15,000 cellphones at its 33 prisons. That's up from just 1,200 five years ago, according to officials.

Dana Simas, an information officer for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said that under a new contract, Global Tel Link has agreed to spend as much as $35 million to install new equipment at each prison within the next three years. The first California unit is to get the gear by October, she said.

The company will pay all costs, Simas said, because it will get the revenue from the pay phones inside prisons that will once again be in demand.

The way the new system works: Each prison will get its own cell tower that will allow prison officials to control all incoming and outgoing calls. All others will not go through.

"After this system goes in, smuggled cellphones will be nothing more than glorified paperweights," Simas said. "A couple of years ago, there were long lines at the pay phones -- hours long. By this year, no one was using them, there were so many smuggled cellphones." California officials said they happened on the idea of tying cellphone smuggling to the pay phone contract when it came up for renewal last year.

In March 2011, Texas prison officials tested a managed-access system at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont -- a top location for smuggled phones -- but decided not to purchase the gear because of its $2.5 million-per-prison cost.

Global Tel Link and Century Link did not respond Wednesday to messages for comment.

Like most other states, prison officials in Texas and California for several years have been battling a steady flood of smuggled cellphones -- easily concealed devices that have been linked to murders, criminal activity by gangs, smuggling, violent assaults on guards, escapes and even a prison riot or two in other states.

After news broke about Texas' death-row caller, Richard Tabler, prison officials imposed a statewide lockdown of all prisons and spent weeks searching every cell. More than 500 additional cellphones were found, including two dozen more on death row.

California, with 138,000 convicts compared to Texas' approximately 155,000, has had similar headlines. Charles Manson, the notorious murderer, has been caught twice with contraband phones, officials said.

In announcing the deal on Monday, California Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said the "groundbreaking and momentous technology" will allow his system "to crack down on the smuggled phones." In Texas, state Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the committee that supervises the prison system and the lawmaker who received the 2008 call -- and later a death threat -- from Tabler, said Texas' move toward curbing smuggled cellphones is long overdue.

"Our administration should be getting right on that," he said after learning about the California contract. "They should have been more proactive." "We need to get these cellphones out of there, and we don't need to wait until the next time somebody on death row calls me." Contact Mike Ward at 474-2791 ___ (c)2012 Austin American-Statesman, Texas Visit Austin American-Statesman, Texas at www.statesman.com/","http://www.statesman.com/ Distributed by MCT Information Services

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