Texas prisons using electronic gear to cut off inmate phone calls

By Michael Graczyk

The Associated Press

BEAUMONT -- The nation's largest state prison system is turning to electronic weaponry to relieve the persistent headache of inmates getting ahold of smuggled cellphones.

Final testing starts next week at the first of two Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons where equipment has been installed to block calls to and from unauthorized phones.

The equipment, known as a managed access system, also diverts text messages, emails and Internet log-in attempts from contraband phones.

Wardens hope that it will be in full operation next month at the Stiles Unit outside Beaumont and the McConnell Unit near Beeville. The two prisons together hold about 5,000 inmates and have been the worst of the more than 100 Texas prisons when it comes to cellphone smuggling.

The goal is to make cellphones useless or at least not worth the risk of extended prison time or reduced privileges, said Michael Roesler, senior warden at the Stiles Unit.

"If the cellphone becomes the proverbial paperweight, taking a chance of losing their good time, their status, their class, their parole possibility becomes too great a risk for them to hang on to," he said.

Prison administrators consider smuggled cellphones to be security threats used by inmates to plan and coordinate escapes, run illicit businesses, and threaten and harass crime victims or authorities.

In South Carolina, a corrections officer in charge of keeping contraband out of the prison where he worked was shot at his home in 2010 in a plan devised by inmates using smuggled phones.

Five years ago in Texas, a Death Row inmate made threatening calls to state Sen. John Whitmire, prompting Gov. Rick Perry to order an unprecedented lockdown of the entire 150,000-inmate prison system to sweep for contraband.

Late last month, several gang members at the McConnell Unit were arrested after trying to sell stolen vehicles to Mexican drug cartel members in a scheme coordinated with illegal phones. The investigation also netted 17 former corrections officers accused of selling phones and drugs to prisoners.

Overall, Texas corrections authorities seized 630 cellphones from inmates in 2011 and 738 last year, including 110 at Stiles.

"It's something we take very seriously," said Tommy Prasifka, deputy director of the agency's institutional division. "We've worked very hard to come up with ideas, constantly looking at better ways, whether it's technology or utilizing searches and shakedowns."

California has nearly 120,000 inmates, the second-largest state prison population. In November, a managed access system went into use at the Avenal State Prison. Nearly 4,800 unique devices and 1.13 million communication attempts were detected in the first month, said Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"We've had so many incidents related to inmates with cellphones, from organizing criminal gang activities, harassing victims," Simas said. "Those kinds of serious incidents can occur when someone has a cellphone that can't be monitored by us."

Charles Manson, arguably California's most notorious inmate, has been caught at least twice with phones.

Texas officials say they have had less of a problem than California, partly because California, citing cost considerations, does not subject employees to metal detector searches when they enter prisons.

It's not clear why Stiles and McConnell have more contraband cellphones, Texas officials said, although they noted that those prisons also have more inmate discipline problems.

"I think a lot of it depends on location of the facility, plus the type of offender," Prasifka said.

The managed access systems won't interfere with 911 calls, but they will allow calls and communication only to and from registered devices. The top wardens will decide which ones to register.

The "brain" of the new system, locked in a closet a few steps from the warden's office, consists of two electronic boxes a bit bigger than two large microwave ovens, filled with blinking lights and wires and a couple of rows of boxes that resemble CD cases.

The apparatus connects with a similar single box of electronics in the individual prison buildings. Those boxes receive signals from unobtrusive plastic squares mounted in the buildings.

"It behaves as a cellular tower," said Mike Bell, the prison system's information technology director. "Based on ID numbers, if you're on the authorized list, it allows the call to go through."

The system also tracks the number of attempted calls from various locations, giving wardens information on where to target searches.

Word of the new system has trickled down to inmates, and authorities are aware of conversations suggesting that different kinds of phones be used to circumvent it, said Lori Davis, an agency regional director.

Department spokesman Jason Clark said: "These guys have 24/7 to try to figure out ways to beat the system. We have to continuously try to stay ahead of the curve."

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