A few years ago, two prisoners used contraband cell phones to orchestrate their escape from the Evansville Correctional Institution in South Carolina. They called relatives, told them where to put wire cutters and when to meet.
The calls continued until the inmates were sprung, said Maj. Robert Murray of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, and it still sticks in his craw.
Murray was among dozens of officials from across the country who came to the closed Maryland House of Corrections in Jessup Thursday for a daylong fact- finding mission on how to clamp down on rampant use of mobile phones by inmates. The goal was to survey technologies available to stop the problem, which has reached a critical mass this year.
FOR THE RECORD - Correction: Because of an editing error, an article in Friday's editions about keeping contraband cell phones out of prisons gave an incorrect name for a South Carolina facility. Two prisoners used cell phones to orchestrate their escape from the Evans Correctional Institution.
The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.
Congress is considering making it legal to block mobile signals around prisons through a bill introduced by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland and lawmakers from a dozen other states. And tech companies are increasingly creating divisions devoted to killing the calls by detecting the phones so they can be confiscated or by intercepting their signals. There are at least three such businesses based in Columbia alone.
The phones - smuggled in by corrupt staff, through the mail and at least once in Brazil by carrier pigeon - have been used to order the death of a Maryland witness, to orchestrate riots in an Oklahoma jail and to threaten a Texas senator.
Cell phones are the most frequently confiscated item in Maryland's jails, according to the Baltimore state's attorney's office. In South Carolina, Murray says, inmates use them to tell confederates outside when the coast is clear to throw contraband over prison walls.
"It creates a dangerous situation for the public, our employees and the offenders," said Gary D. Maynard, head of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
Despite the problem and Thursday's demonstration, Maryland officials say they have no immediate plans to purchase phone detection systems.
In July, Maynard testified in support of the federal Safe Prisons Act, which would allow conditional cell signal jamming in jails, which is now prohibited by a 1934 communications law enforced by the Federal Communications Commission.
Support for the act has grown along with instances of cell phone abuses. Mikulski and Gov. Martin O'Malley issued a joint statement Thursday saying that it is "critical" that the bill passes.
