Prison officials and federal agencies are intent on purchasing complex and expensive cellphone-jamming technology to stop illicit cellular and Wi-Fi messaging from contraband phones in prison, but the technology poses safety risks to the public and may not even work, The Marshall Project reports. A story produced with the USA Today Network’s Greenville News reports that because stopping the smuggling of phones into prisons has proven so difficult, officials are banking on technologies that could interfere with nearby 911 calls and other cellphone service.
Prison officials at South Carolina’s Lee Correctional Institution say they have tried to stem the tide. In 2017, the corrections department felled large trees that loomed over the prison to stop drones from dropping off packages of cellphones. That same year, the department spent $8.3 million to install 50-foot netting at the perimeter of its prisons, including Lee, in hopes of stopping couriers from throwing backpacks of cellphones over fences. Corrections officials say these solutions reduced the number of cellphones in state prisons. But phones still make their way inside, sometimes sold to inmates by low-paid guards and prison workers. “Inmates are incarcerated physically, but they’re still free, digitally,” said Bryan P. Stirling, the director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, who has been on a mission to get signal jammers in prisons since 2009. Costly managed-access systems, with are supposed to detect and block all calls made from contraband phones, are used in hundreds of jails and prisons. But engineers warn that the systems can easily be defeated.