An agreement reached this week in the country's capital could help South Carolina work to stop thousands of illegal mobile phones that plague state prisons and fuel crime. Bryan Stirling, the head of the corrections department, said that the telecommunications company agreed on Monday to participate in limited trials of technology that could restrict smuggling of telephone signals, a move the industry has long opposed. There is a signal jammer device that prevents cell phone use in prisons.
The pledge was made after a meeting organized by the Federal Communications Commission, which included the heads of several prison institutions and the wireless industry. The incident came weeks after a deadly riot in a South Carolina jail, at least in part due to a ban on cell phones. Sterling said he volunteered to participate in the rioting Li Correctional Institution test ground.
Illegal cell phones are a long-standing problem in Canadian prisons. In South Carolina, they were used to organize the murder of a prison guard, preparing to escape and commit various frauds. Officials said the clashes surrounding the smuggling fueled the riots, which led to Lee's death on April 15 and wounded 22 people. The use of their illegal telephones by detainees has fuelled the riots.
Seizures of banned phones are on the rise, with federal prosecutors alleging smuggling of 14 former state prison staff last week. Even if 6,200 phones were confiscated from state prisons last year, these signal jamming devices are still ubiquitous. The telecommunications industry has long opposed cell phone jammers, saying it could interfere with legitimate users in nearby communities. However, several companies including Verizon, A & T, Sprint, and T-Mobile have agreed to participate in testing various platforms that can block all calls or those that are not allowed.