Texas found 221 cell phones last year in a maximum security unit where inmate David Puckett staged a brazen breakout last week, says the Houston Chronicle. “Any way that you can imagine that it will be smuggled they’ll do it,” said John Moriarty, inspector general for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “I’ve got an X-ray of an inmate with one in his body cavity, and not only that, but with a charger.” Officers at the maximum security unit once seized a shipment of almost 80 phones in a box that came in the mail, labeled as an air compressor.
Texas state Sen. John Whitmire believes state officials should jam inmate cell phones even if it might violate federal law. “I would take control of our prisons, which we’re in charge of, I would jam ’em with known technology, and if the federal government doesn’t like it, let them do something about it,” Whitmire said. “I don’t know what the consequences will be, but I’m willing to find out.”