Maryland's top corrections official plans to testify today before a Senate committee in support of federal legislation that would make signal-jamming technology legal for use in the country's prisons, where contraband cell phones have become a deadly - and growing - problem.
"We know we are finding more [phones] now, and we think we're keeping more out, but we really don't have a real picture of how many are currently in the system and being used," said Gary D. Maynard, secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Corrections.
Maynard's department plans to test technologies designed to thwart cell phone use in jails from a dozen vendors this fall. But a communications law passed in 1934 bars interfering with radio signals, including cell phone transmissions. The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, would change the law to allow such jamming with FCC approval.
"All across the country, cell phones are being smuggled into prisons and being used by inmates to communicate with criminals on the outside," Mikulski said in a statement via e-mail. "Just more than two years ago, Carl Lackl, a young father of two in Maryland, was killed after an inmate used his cell phone to order a hit. This is not an isolated incident and it must stop."
Cell phones are smuggled into prisons by the thousands, often by bribed correctional officers, visitors and contractors. They're hidden in food shipments, concealed in body cavities, tossed over prison walls and - in Brazil - flown in by carrier pigeons. Inmates use them to run drug operations, harass victims' families, plan escapes, arrange alibis, pass the time and intimidate witnesses.
To fight the problem, Maryland has increased cell searches and employed detectors, including a chair that can sense metal hidden in body cavities. The state has pioneered a program using search dogs to find contraband phones. But such methods are costly, use a lot of manpower and are not fail-safe, leading officials to look into signal jamming.
"We want to look at that and see what technology is the best," Maynard said.
This week, in an effort led by South Carolina, more than two dozen states and the District of Columbia Department of Corrections submitted a petition to the Federal Communications Commission, which enforces the 1934 law, asking for permission to jam cell phone signals in jails. The FCC has previously denied such state requests as being illegal.
