Top state prosecutors across the country are again urging Congress to pass legislation allowing state prisons to jam cell phone signals smuggled to inmates, devices that lawyers say allow prisoners to plan violence and commit crimes.
“Simply put, we need Congress to pass legislation giving states the power to implement cell phone jammer to protect inmates, guards and the public at large,” 22 prosecutors — all Republicans and led by South Carolina Attorney General Allen Wilson — wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Wilson’s office said it plans to contact Democratic state prosecutors, saying the issue is not partisan.
The letter, provided to The Associated Press, lists several crimes that the attorneys say were planned by inmates using contraband cell phones, including a drug conspiracy in Tennessee and a double murder ordered by an inmate in Indiana.
They also pointed to a 2018 gang-related siege at a South Carolina prison that lasted more than seven hours and left seven inmates dead. One inmate described the bodies “literally stacked on top of each other like a horrible pile of wood stakes.” Corrections officials blamed the organized violence — the worst prison riot in the U.S. in 25 years — in part on illegal cell phones.
“By banning inmates from using contraband cell phones, we can prevent serious drug trafficking, deadly riots, and other crimes,” prosecutors wrote.
To render the phones — smuggled in hollowed-out footballs, brought in by corrupt employees and sometimes dropped by drones — worthless, prosecutors are calling for changes to a nearly century-old federal communications law that currently prohibits state prisons from using jamming technology to eliminate illegal cell phone signals.
State prisons have struggled for years to combat illegal cell phones, and South Carolina Corrections Director Bryan Stirling is at the forefront of calls by corrections directors nationwide to use more technology to combat contraband phones.
An incremental victory came in 2021, when the Federal Communications Commission issued a ruling allowing state prison systems to work with cellphone providers to apply on a case-by-case basis for licenses to identify and shut down illegal cellphone signals. South Carolina was the first state to apply to use the technology, but Sterling told The Associated Press on Tuesday that no action has been taken on the state’s application.
Federal prisons are allowed to jam cellphone signals behind bars, but no prisons are currently doing so, Sterling said.
CTIA, a wireless industry group, opposes jamming, saying it could hinder legal calls. But CTIA told the commission “it has consistently worked successfully with its member companies” to “stop providing service to prohibited devices” under court orders they’ve obtained, according to a 2020 FCC filing.
CTIA and FCC officials did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the renewed push for jamming.
[source:foxnews]