Opinion: Let states jam inmate cellphones
Editor's note: Sherri Lydon is U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina. This column originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
"Reception is so bad ... I'm trying to get over to Verizon so that way every time, if it's in my pocket or whatever, your call's still gonna come in, and I can hear you clearer."
This is not a commercial for a cellphone carrier. These are the words of an inmate serving a life sentence for murder in a South Carolina state prison, who had a big need for cellphone service. He and four other inmates were using phones smuggled into prison to move large quantities of methamphetamine from California to South Carolina. The case, unfortunately, was hardly unusual. Access to contraband cellphones lets inmates commit crimes far beyond prison walls.
As U.S. attorney for South Carolina, I see the threats contraband phones in prisons pose to the general public, prison workers and other inmates every day. South Carolina already uses X-ray machines and metal detectors, perimeter posts, netting around fences and even detection dogs to stop the flood of contraband phones into the state's prisons. In the past year, my office has indicted 19 former South Carolina Department of Corrections employees on federal charges for accepting bribes and smuggling contraband like cellphones, drugs and tobacco into prisons. But our best efforts to stop phones from getting into prisons aren't enough.
The only way to stop the public-safety threat from contraband phones is to disable cell signals and render the devices completely useless. Inmates shouldn't be able to boost their drug-distribution rings by switching to providers with more reliable service inside the prison. They shouldn't get a signal at all.
But under the current interpretation of the Communications Act of 1934, only federal agencies can jam the public airwaves. That means federal prisons can jam cell signals, but state and local prisons can't. And while Congress debates whether to allow our state and local partners to disable signals, inmates keep using their phones to commit more crimes.
In April 2018, a federal jury convicted a South Carolina state inmate - already serving a 50-year sentence for attempting to kill his ex-wife and murdering her father - of using a contraband cellphone to deal drugs and to make a second attempt on his ex-wife's life. He accessed the dark web and arranged to buy a mail bomb from a foreign arms dealer (who was actually an undercover FBI agent) with bitcoin. He then conspired with two men outside the prison to have the bomb delivered to his ex-wife.
In November 2018, our U.S. Attorney's Office indicted five South Carolina inmates who used cellphones to run a "sextortion" scheme that defrauded more than 400 members of the U.S. military of more than $560,000. The inmates accessed dating sites and pretended to be women seeking relationships with young military men. They downloaded nude pictures, pretended to be the women in the pictures and sent them to the servicemen. They then called the servicemen and claimed to be the upset fathers of these "women." They told the servicemen that the "daughters" were minors and threatened to notify law enforcement if the servicemen didn't send money. These inmates received hundreds of thousands of dollars while sitting in their prison cells.
Thanks to contraband phones, the prison economy is thriving. Our office recently initiated forfeiture proceedings in which the federal government seized more than $400,000 from the prison accounts of 13 inmates. According to the seizure warrants, this money was derived from unlawful activity - including extortion and the distribution of contraband - undertaken from inside prisons using contraband cellphones.
We don't put criminals in prison so they can keep breaking the law from behind bars. But as long as they have time and access to cellphones, inmates will keep running drug rings, stealing and menacing innocent Americans. Only Congress can amend the law to allow our state and local partners to disable signals. It's time to do it.