Sometimes it seems like cell phones are more prevalent in America than SUV-clogged traffic and low-carb advertising. You can hear people talking about every gruesome, private detail of that last doctor's visit while you're in the grocery store, walking down the street or even in the bathroom.
And now, you can hear about it in your local prison or jail.
Today, when America's prisoners want to reach out and touch someone, they usually are limited in time and cost to the correctional system's monitored phone docks. But increasingly, prisoners are finding cell phones a convenient way to bypass the monitored phone systems for their "Can you hear me now?"
"I think that the one difference with cell phones (rather than other contraband) is the ability to connect unwatched and unmonitored with the outside," said Stephen Ingley, executive director of the American Jail Association, the representative group for jail employees. "The smaller they get, and the more technologically advanced they get, the more complicated they get."
While no one is characterizing the rise in cell-phone contraband as a problem of epidemic proportions, employees of America's prisons and jails are finding more hidden cell phones than ever before. And as the technology gets smaller, lighter and more undetectable, most corrections officials are bracing to find the little ringers throughout their facilities.
"We're just trying to stay on top of something that could pose a prison risk," said Lisa Lamb, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
Many activist groups agree that cell phones are a problem when they're in jails and prisons. But, they argue, the cost of using the in-prison system for phoning home costs families and prisoners more for an in-state phone call than E.T.'s famous cross-cosmos connection.
"We could certainly find a solution," said Jenni Gainsborough, director of the Washington office of Penal Reform International.
While creating competition in correctional dial-ups may not halt the problem altogether, it would certainly help take away some of the temptation to smuggle cell phones behind bars, said Kay Perry, CURE National's campaign coordinator for ETC, the Campaign to Promote Equitable Telephone Charges.
"It's poor public policy," she said of charging high fees for prisoner phone calls, "because we know that prisoners with a strong social support system will do better on the outside."
One ringy-dingy
Texas, one of the only states that doesn't allow regular prisoner phone calls, had perhaps America's biggest contraband cell-phone raid in June.
In it, a 22-year-old guard was found with a cell phone and heroin, which she was smuggling to a member of the Texas Syndicate gang. According to one report, at least one gang member flushed his phone before officials could search his cell. But a drag of the prison's catch basins, which are kept in all drains, turned up several soaked mobiles.
Internationally, cell phones were used to organize the largest prison riot in Brazil's history. According to The Christian Science Monitor, that mob mayhem involved more than 28 prisons and 10,000 inmates.
According to Textually.org, a Mafioso in a New Delhi prison orchestrated the assassination of several police officers using his cell phone. And a Canadian prisoner ran a Miami-to-Canada cocaine line using his cell phone.
Those are the nightmare situations, but here in America, the nightmare is still little more than a bad dream.
"The truth is that I don't suppose anyone knows how extensively they're being used," Gainsborough said.
But officials are still taking precautions.
The Kentucky Department of Corrections has tightened its employee and visitor cell-phone rules in the wake of a few security breaches.
Lamb said in the last year, the Kentucky Department of Corrections had "a couple" of cell phones in minimum security prisons and one in a medium security prison. In one case, the minimum security prisoner was on a work detail outside the institution and picked up a phone hidden by an accomplice.
Prisoners get their free pass to call friends and family several ways. Some smuggle the phones in themselves by sticking it in a bodily orifice or hiding it in some undetectable place, like a mayonnaise jar. Others get them from visitors.
Perhaps the most disturbing tr/files/storyimages/for correctional officials, though, is when guards and other correctional workers smuggle contraband phones in.
"They're going to be the most difficult because they have access," said Ingley.
All prisoners go through thorough checks when they leave and enter the facilities. And visitors and employees go through scans, too, but often not at the same level as the convicts.
In response to the problem of cell-phone smuggling, Kentucky this year revamped its rules about who can carry cell phones into a prison yard. The new rules restrict them to people who have security clearance and a special note on their badge that indicates they can have a mobile.
Everyone else, including state officials such as Lamb, have to leave their flip phones at home.
"I may be allowed in the administration building, but I would not be allowed out in the yard with one," Lamb said.
While prison and jail workers try to turn the ringers off on the inside, activist groups are outside trying to tackle a different aspect of the problem — prison phone costs.
This isn't 10-10-321
While cell phones haven't been a major issues for prisoner-activist groups, prison and jail phone costs have been ringing bells for years with organizations such as CURE.
"I'm not going to sit here and tell you that someone isn't doing it (smuggling in cell phones) with bad intentions," Perry said. "At the same time, I think it's a tremendous temptation. I can understand completely why someone is tempted to do it."
Perry emphasized that CURE does not support any contraband in prisons, but she said many states are using in-correctional phone systems to make huge profits off prisoners and their families. She said several states earn commissions from prisoner phone calls. Only one state she knows of, Nebraska, doesn't take a commission.
Also, prisoners are often allowed to make only collect calls, which sap family pocketbooks, particularly when the rates can reach up to Michigan's $17.34 for a 15-minute interstate phone call.
"The high costs are punishing the families more than the prisoners," Perry said. "They're only guilty of loving somebody. That's not a criminal offense as I see it."
She said many family members drop all contact with their incarcerated relatives after two years because of phone costs.
