To Fight Crime, We Must Go After Contraband Cellphones

W e send criminals to prison not only to punish them, but also to protect society and give those who broke the law an opportunity to reform themselves. Contraband cellphones are a direct threat to these key principles of our justice system. We must disable these tools of criminality by adopting the Cellphone Jamming Reform Act, which I reintroduced last week in the U.S. Senate.

Last year, 23 states reported seizing over 24,000 contraband cellphones from inmates. Inmates use these illegally smuggled cellphones to communicate with one another and with criminals still on the streets. They use them to maintain illicit networks, murder witnesses, extort prison guards, and terrorize their former communities. Some gangs have used contraband cellphones to transform their prisons into fortresses of crime — ordering hits on their rivals on the outside, while being insulated from retaliation by the walls and guards intended to contain them.

Just last year, a Kentucky inmate was found guilty of using a contraband cellphone to plot the assassination of the assistant U.S. attorney and government witness responsible for putting him behind bars. In 2020, several prisoners were charged in the largest racketeering case in the history of the state of South Carolina for using contraband cellphones to help orchestrate murders, kidnappings, and drug smuggling while in prison. In 2019, another South Carolina inmate used a contraband cellphone to order the kidnapping and murder of a 27-year-old woman. In 2018, gang members in a maximum-security prison engaged in the deadliest U.S. prison riot in 25 years after a dispute escalated over contraband cellphones. Seven inmates were stabbed to death. In 2010, a prison guard was shot six times in the chest at his home in a targeted assassination attempt ordered by an inmate using a contraband cellphone.

Inmates also use contraband cellphones to operate extortion operations while behind bars. In 2019, two low-life prisoners blackmailed a U.S. Army veteran, likely causing him to commit suicide. Especially violent prisoners also use contraband cellphones to extort the families of vulnerable inmates — forcing them to call their family members and beg for money so they aren’t assaulted, raped, or killed. If payment isn’t received, these criminals can then send pictures of beaten and brutalized inmates to their loved ones. No prisoner or family member should have to experience such terror.

Contraband cellphones are also key organizational tools for the approximately 200,000 inmates in gangs, who use them to communicate throughout and across prisons and to smuggle drugs into prisons. Unsurprisingly, prisons run by well-organized gangs and awash in narcotics are not conducive to inmate reform and self-improvement. Instead, they become cauldrons of recidivism, fear, and escalating criminality.

Additional changes are needed in our prisons, including increased funding for correctional officers and facilities, but we should start by disabling contraband cellphones, which are crime multipliers. That’s where my bill will help. The Cellphone Jamming Reform Act will clarify federal laws and regulations and explicitly authorize U.S. prisons to install cellphone jamming technology and turn contraband cellphones into useless paperweights.

Unfortunately, the usual suspects are opposing my bill. Liberal activists and pro-criminal organizations falsely claim that inmates primarily use these cellphones to talk to their moms and family members because the prison phones are too expensive. Although some inmates use these illegal cellphones for non-illicit purposes, affordability is not the reason inmates acquire them. A contraband cellphone can cost as much as $3,000, not including service fees — which is far more expensive than using the prison phones. The principal reason inmates use contraband cellphones is that, unlike the prison phones, they are not monitored by authorities. This makes illegal activity far easier. Ultimately, activists are hurting the people they are trying to help. After all, inmates are the most common victims of the prison gangs these cellphones empower.

Special interests in the telecom industry also oppose this legislation, erroneously asserting that the jamming technology could harm law-abiding citizens and even block outgoing 911 calls near prisons. This is baseless fearmongering. New jamming technology is highly advanced and can be limited to affect only cellphones within prison walls. The jammers can also be localized so they affect only certain parts of the prisons, such as cell blocks where inmates primarily plot their criminal schemes. Jamming technology in prisons will not hurt law-abiding Americans.

Telecom lobbyists also claim this is the beginning of a slippery slope toward further cellphone jamming — but no such agenda exists. This is a narrowly tailored piece of legislation that is specific to prisons. Americans are dying, and the half-measures the industry prefers are ineffective. The time to act is now.

For the sake of Americans behind and outside of bars, Congress should pass the Cellphone Jamming Reform Act.