Mobile phone into the prison world, prisoners can use the network?

A supplier's truck enters the Sierra Leonean protection Center's entrance on January 2, 2014. It was a medium-sized state prison in the foothills of James, California. Guards were stationed at the entrance, holding a female Belgian Maryknoll dog named Duchess. It is a police dog that California State CDCR number K-9 contraband unit. As the truck driver waited to pass the checkpoint, Duchess began to revolve around the back of the truck. Suddenly she began to roar with excitement. There seemed to be something hidden there.

When the police checked the truck, they found a large amount of contraband: three-pipe Universal glue, four-pipe power glue, six rolls of paper and three pounds and a half loose tobacco. But the most valuable part of the loot is not drugs, but a plastic bag with 15 handsets and 12 chargers.

Given the importance of digital connectivity in the world today, it may not be surprising that mobile phones are being included in the list of contraband with drugs and weapons nationwide. Since 2012, the California Correctional and Rehabilitation Department (CDCR) has seized more than 30,000 handsets from state facilities. In 2013 alone, the Florida State department confiscated 4,200 handsets from the national penitentiary. Sometimes, one of the illegal mobile phones into the prison. Alternatively, these phones are delivered at once. In a 2013-year raid on the East Texas Medium prison, the authorities seized 45 mobile phones and 52 chargers. The stolen goods have been buried in the underground recycle Bin.

Prisons and cages are considered technical blind spots. In all but the most relaxed and safe facilities, mobile phones are not available to inmates. The same is true for private laptops, tablets and other network-connected devices. The federal penitentiary has launched the Corr Link, Trulincs and e-mail system, allowing inmates to send information and achieve pre-approved communication with the outside world. However, a wider range of Internet applications is still banned. In many prisons, paid telephones are the most advanced communications equipment allowed for ordinary inmates.

On the face of it, though, American correctional institutions are battling illegal scientific and technological activities. Some inmates use banned mobile phones to send information to their loved ones. Some use Facebook and Twitter to complain about their living conditions and organize collective activities with inmates who are held in other prisons. Prisoners are eager to gain access to the Internet, but correctional officers want prisoners to stay away from these communications equipment, which creates new tensions between the two sides.

"It's a cat-and-mouse game," California State Public Information Officer Simas. "Exactly, there are countless avenues for mobile phones to go to prison, and it's impossible to make sure everything is cut off," he said. ”

A one-month survey shows that in some States prisoners are still involved in social media surveys while serving their sentences. And many of them are regulars in these media. Some inmates connect to the Internet via proxy servers (for example, a prisoner's loved one has the prisoner's Facebook password and can use that account to send information). Other inmates, however, visit the site directly through their mobile phones.

"has been held for two weeks, followed by the third week of suffering." The letters sent to me by friends and relatives must be piled up. Wealth is a blessing to me in prison. If you give me a nice sausage sandwich, even if I'm full, I'll gobble it up and eat it ... "a Facebook user wrote last year. The user's name is the same as the name of a federal prisoner who is serving a sentence in West Virginia State. And it seems that the prisoner had successfully published articles in two prisons he had stayed in.

"Well, I'd like to say hello and tell you that I am serving in an open prison," said another federal prisoner, who was sentenced for armed robbery at the High security facility in Texas, "Don't worry, man." Two gangs are in my neighborhood, so I'm not involved. The prisoner described this way (two prisoners ' names have been edited and hidden to protect them from punishment.) )

Similarly, other social networking sites are littered with evidence of a variety of prohibited activities. A Vine user named Acie bandage uploaded some six-second video over the phone. These videos record his and his inmates ' dancing, boredom and parody of life. (The user disguises his identity by wrapping a bandage around his face in a video.) )

Many mobile phones are smuggled into prisons by correctional officers (which are often sold by correctional officers at hundreds of or thousands of dollars per unit), but this is not the only way. Last year, Mississippi Correctional Institute spent 1.3 million dollars to build 40-foot protection nets to prevent the use of mobile phones and other contraband was thrown into prison. At present, K-9 mobile phone testing units throughout the country with the correctional department, hoping to effectively curb the current situation of mobile phone wanton circulation. And the New York Correctional Department has a special pivot seat for prisons called B.O.S.S. (Body orifice Security Scanner Human Orifice safety scanner). The design of this seat effectively prevents visiting personnel from smuggling mobile phones through the vagina or anus. The Correctional Service has reported a case in which people hid their mobile phones in mashed potatoes, bagged ramen noodles and baby diapers.

"Prisoners are very clever and imaginative," Simas said. "It was shocking to us that they had a lot of free time on their minds. ”

Mobile phones were once popular inside prisons, and they were used as tools for emergency calls and entertainment equipment. A survey in Oklahoma in 2013 found that the number of illegal cell phones used in prisons has exceeded 3000 since January 2012. The evidence for these cases comes from social networking sites. In a similar study, Nashville IV found that more than 100 inmates in the Tennessee prison could use their mobile phones to log on to Facebook. What's more, take a picture of yourself smoking drugs and using other contraband. (Since the results of the investigation, the United States Tennessee State authorities to investigate 17 prisons, more than 70 prisoners were punished.) In 2010, a group of Georgian prisoners protested on a hunger strike, in order to secure the right to use the cell phone. "We send and receive information quite frequently," said one protester facing the New York Times, but at the moment, in his prison, perhaps 10% of inmates are playing with their phones.

The penalty for being caught using a telephone in a prison is serious. In the 2010, the concealment of mobile phones inside federal prisons was criminalized. The States of America have adopted their own laws and strict rules to restrain such criminal acts. In 2011, the California Senate Act 26th stipulates that mobile devices such as mobile phones in prisons can cause crime. In Florida State, the smuggling of mobile phones into prison was sentenced to a 3-degree felony, the highest sentence of 5 years. In Mississippi State, such acts can be sentenced to a maximum penalty of 15 years. In a 2011 report, the federal prison authorities said: "There is a huge security risk in the illegal use of mobile phones by prisoners." They can communicate through the phone, to deceive the people. This can easily constitute a more serious crime. This is as bad as drug trafficking and intrusion into others.

A device called "Controllable Access System" appears at the forefront of the illegal mobile phone problem. The device can intercept information before it reaches the carrier tower. Equipped with the system in prison, the cell phone in the prison can be used within the permitted range. Voice calls, information and data from banned handsets are blocked. To date, controllable access systems have been widely used in Texas, Battambang, California State, Georgia State and Mississippi State prisons, and have been remarkably successful. According to CDCR, California State's controllable access system has intercepted 12 million illegal communications from 77,600 independent communications devices since its inception. (By contrast, there are about 105 illegal communications attempts by state criminals.) )

The cost of installing a controllable access system is more than 1 million dollars. However, some prisons have found a way to reduce costs by working with external suppliers. In California State, for example, Global tel*link-one by one private companies operating in interstate telephone systems, which are equipped with a controllable access system in correctional institutions and do not have to submit any fees to the state government, which is part of the exclusive contract for a period of five years. (The deal is not unreasonable: Global Tel*link believes that if prisoners ' wireless networks are cut off, they will get more lucrative profits from pay phones.) )

Prison officials are familiar with the dangers of smuggling mobile phones, which are mostly similar: criminals use smuggled mobile phones to harass victims, intimidate witnesses or plot criminal activities. But this is not alarmist. According to prison authorities, in 2007, a Maryland inmate was planning to murder a witness with a mobile phone. In 2012, 40 people were indicted by Indiana law enforcement officers for allegedly participating in a large-scale interstate drug trade. Subsequently, two inmates were convicted of using the mobile phone provided by the guards to plan the drug trade.

However, many inmates use mobile phones just to entertain themselves and avoid being eliminated by the outside world because they are in prison. Mobile phones make it easy for them to get in touch with their loved ones and loved ones without paying expensive fees. On social media sites, you'll find a lot of inmates ' daily records. They use photos to record their lives: Watch TV shows, sing songs, hoard junk food from the grocery store and show off tattoos. It is difficult to be convincing that these activities are illegal and dangerous. (In some cases, smuggled mobile phones can even protect prison security.) In 2012, a South Carolina State inmate used his telephone to inform the prison authorities that a security guard had been taken hostage, a message that allowed the security guard to be rescued. )

"The guy who always likes to get into trouble is the one who wants to make contact with society," Michael Santos said. "Michael Santos is a famous writer, teacher, and prison reform advocate." He was sentenced to jail for drug trafficking in a federal prison in 26 and released in 2013. "The conviction that the use of mobile phones in prisons increases the likelihood of offenders being jailed again." "The prison wants inmates to live in the Stone Age, so it's hard for inmates to get used to outside work when they return to society," Mr Santos said. "Frankly speaking, banning the use of mobile phones is a human rights violation," Mr Santos said. ”

In addition to practical security issues, the digital field in criminal justice has also produced a lot of philosophical problems. In the 2015, when science and technology became the foundation of culture, communication and education and banned prisoners from using the Internet, such decisions were not too brutal. What role does technology play in the process of introspection of prisoners? If the purpose of imprisoning them is to limit their activities and prevent them from harming innocent people again, What is the need to rob them of their physical rights? Is the prisoner going to build a cage of thought?

In fact, opening up the Internet to prisoners is no way to solve the problem. Some European countries, such as Norway, have tried to open up networks to prisoners to help complete the relevant legal research and give them some network freedom. So the Norwegian prisoners are not worried about being swallowed by the tide of social progress. However, prisoners in the United States, due to strict network restrictions, caused most of them to be eliminated by society.

John Laub, a former director of the National Institute of Justice, recalled his imperial career when he had considered giving a cell phone to inmates in prison in order to better control the situation inside the prison. Laub is currently a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland. He said to his students, "You must think I'm too indulgent with them, no, they don't think so." ”

Technology and prisons do have many opposites. Science and technology are conducive to the diffusion and dissemination of information However, prisons exist to partition these connections. However, the existence of prisons has never completely hindered the development of science and technology, and should not form a hindrance. (one thing, prisoners used to be barred from using telephone and corrlinks e-mails, but now, who is going to leave these communications tools?) Mobile phones may be as slowly accepted by the correctional system as other technology products.

In prisons, science and technology have many uses in economics and law. The Court has repeatedly stated that prisoners can use real-time information to assert their rights, but most of this information can only be obtained from the Internet. (in 2011, a study by the Minnesota Correctional Services Department showed that inmates who received a regular visit were less than those who had not been exposed to the world for years, about 13% per cent.) Those who are isolated are more likely to be added to their sentences. )

But prisoners now face "vicious" prison officials who make devices such as cellphones a source of all invisible threats. (They also believe that the more advanced a prisoner's mobile phone is, the greater the risk of a prison.) As a result, the Cat-and-mouse game seems to be escalating in the short term. Prisoners will still take the risk of using mobile phones. In response, the prison authorities will continue to increase investment in human and material resources in order to control the wanton circulation of mobile phones.

At the same time, the Internet as the freest and most democratic way of disseminating information in history, it will still show us invaluable knowledge. Our lives are inseparable from the Internet, so the gap between the information world and the prison life will continue to widen.