Monday, December 28, 2009

NIJ: Solutions to cell phone contraband mostly "expensive and labor intenstive"

Via the Crime Report:
A new paper by the National Institute of Justice examines the challenges that the new generation of cell phones poses to the corrections community. Now smaller than ever and with both audio, video and data capacity, the NIJ reports that cell phones have been used to conduct illegal activity. In the first half of 2008, California corrections officials confiscated 1,331 cell phones from inmates, but technology that senses and blocks phone signals is expensive, and can interfere with staff cell phones.

To read the whole report click here.
The short, two-page report includes a tidbit about cell-phone sniffing dogs, which have received significant press recently, declaring such efforts have "not been rigorously evaluated. Dog training can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Dogs must be close to the phone, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the phone must be left in the same place for a considerable time to be found."

Besides cell-phone jamming, which is illegal for now unless Congress changes a federal communications law that's been on the books since the 1930s, most proposed solutions to the problem, says NIJ, are "expensive and labor intensive."

6 comments:

  1. Do you know how many were seized in TX last year? We don't seem to have such a huge problem that Hutchinson should be pushing for a block.
    Whitmire was wrong to show his weakness publicly. He has made himself an easy target if someone with a grudge wants to create havoc.

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  2. The prison folks need to get with the folks who build hospitals.
    My cell phone never works inside a hospital.

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  3. Having spent the better part of a week this December with a family member in the hospital anon 9:24, I can testify that truer words have never been written.

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  4. This just gave Ole Whit another thing to grandstand about. He's made quite a successful political career with this type of thing.

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  5. Have you guys seen some of the technologies like inmate cellphone detection?

    Here's an article about Cell Phones in Prison

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  6. I don't think they should jam them at all. Since everything on a prison premise is subject to surveillence and prisons are claiming that illegal activities are being coordinated via these cell phones, why not surveil them in the same way that the military assets surveil cell conversations in war zones?

    See link http://ow.ly/14xQ9

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