At least 15,000 mobile phones or SIM cards were confiscated in English and Welsh prisons in 2017, equivalent to one for every six inmates. In South Carolina in 2017, prison officers found and took one phone for every three inmates, and many other agencies have similarly high phone-to-inmate ratios – for example, in Oklahoma, it’s one phone for every six prisoners.
military service members.Īnd it’s not just a handful of phones causing these issues the numbers paint a grim picture of the extent of the problem. Fifteen prisoners housed in the North and South Carolina Departments of Corrections were charged in a “sextortion” ring, in which they used contraband cellphones to target U.S.A South Carolina Department of Corrections officer was shot six times after a hit was put out on a contraband phone. Contraband cellphones have been linked to coordinated attacks on prison officials and other illegal operations.South Carolina officials blamed a prison riot that killed seven inmates in April 2018 on a turf war between gangs over territory, money and contraband items such as drugs and cellphones.In 2018, federal prosecutors said two inmates used smuggled cellphones to run a violent, drug-dealing street gang from inside California’s super-maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison.
In the United Kingdom, inmates have run a cocaine ring, arranged the murder of a teenager as part of a feud and organized the killing of a gang leader.