Senate to vote on outlawing prison cell phones

(04-30) 04:00 PDT Sacramento, California - -- Cellular phones have become so popular in California's state prisons that inmates are using them to coordinate escapes and, authorities suspect, to orchestrate crimes outside the gates. More than 2,800 cell phones were found on inmates or hidden around the facilities last year, prison officials say, double the number confiscated the year before. In an attempt to curb the problem, the state Senate is expected to pass a law next week that will make it a crime for the nearly 172,000 state prison inmates to possess cell phones or for people to smuggle them into prisons. "Every one of these phones is a threat to everyone - officers, prisoners and the general public," said Sen. John Benoit, R-Bermuda Dunes (Riverside County), who introduced the bill to outlaw unauthorized cell phones in the state's 94 prisons and other facilities. Such actions are now punishable by administrative penalties. If caught, inmates face the loss of 30 days of credit for good behavior. More than half the phones in prisons come from staff at the facilities - including guards, cooks, health care workers and others who sell them for between $100 and $400 apiece, state officials say. Others are concealed in food containers and packages sent to inmates, while still others are hidden at work sites where minimum-security prisoners can retrieve them, authorities say. At least two inmates have used cell phones to coordinate their getaway after escaping, said Richard Subia, associate director for the division of adult institutions in the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. CONTINUE READING..