Jails and prisons across the country are struggling to prevent inmates from carrying on criminal activities inside premises with the use of cell phones. The Tennessee Department of Corrections says that the scale of drug running operations from within prison is huge. The Department plans to train three dogs, which are already trained to find drugs, to sniff out illicit cell phones.
Nevertheless, in spite of regular searches and a ban on corrections officers keeping cell phones while on duty, the phones still find their way to inmates.
The Department of Corrections considers the jamming of cell phone signals the most effective option to counter the menace. Jamming is not legal and will affect cell phone services near the prisons. Moreover, officers who are now able to get information through questioning of the suspects will lose that information if the call is jammed.
The U.S. House has passed a bill banning possession of cell phones in federal prisons and classifying such devices as contraband. The U.S. Senate also passed a similar bill, sponsored by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who says that one fired prison guard had made nearly $150,000 in a year by providing cell phones to inmates. This bill could put anyone trying to give a cell phone to a prison inmate in jail for over a year.
Dogs that can sniff out cell phones are the current backup plan and it appears that they are being used effectively on Rhode Island. The dogs are expensive, both in training and in maintenance. About $7000 is spent on each dog’s search and training protocol.
The Department of Corrections has spent thousands of dollars to trace out and train special European breeds that can sniff out prison cells, hallways and cafeterias for heroin marijuana, cocaine, and cell phones.