In prison, cellphone is coveted contraband

An inmate with a cellphone can be king of the cellblock.

He or she can trade minutes for favors or food, maintain outside links to intimidate witnesses or even continue a fraud, drug or gang operation.

Cellphones are right up there with weapons and drugs these days in terms of security threats inside prisons, said Rick Jacobs, director of special operations for the Georgia Department of Corrections.

It’s a felony to have one inside a Georgia prison, punishable by five years for anyone, including employees. Other states have similar laws.

“If I’m an inmate … I can use that cellphone to trade out minutes for honey buns, minutes for protection, minutes for favors,” Jacobs said. “Cellphones are absolutely the fastest-growing form of contraband we are trying to manage in the Georgia prison system. … It’s a nationwide issue.”

Cellphones are not found in jails as often because pretrial inmates are not locked up long enough to establish relationships with detention officers. But an admirer managed to get one to quadruple murderer Brian Nichols while he awaited trial in 2006 — and pay a deputy to keep it charged, according to testimony at Nichols’ recent trial.

Jacobs said the camera feature on the phones can be used to transmit images of a prison layout or intricate locking systems. Cellphones were used to plan prison riots in Brazil, and in Maryland an accused killer used a cellphone to set up the murder of a key witness against him, authorities say.

In Texas, authorities say death row inmate Richard Tabler used a smuggled cellphone to make threatening calls to a state senator. Tabler’s phone was found in the ceiling above a shower — and officers also found 11 others on death row while looking for it.

No cellphones have been found on Georgia’s death row, Jacobs said, but he added they have been found in other high-security units, mostly by using handheld detection devices the system recently bought.

In 2007, 77 cellphones were discovered in 19 unannounced shakedowns at higher-security state prisons. Through November of this year, 74 cellphones were found in 14 unannounced searches.

Cellphones have been found secreted in a cut-out section in a Bible, Jacobs said. They have been found in pieces scattered around a cellblock so they cannot be easily linked to one inmate.

Entrances and metal detectors have been upgraded, prison officials say, but inmates still get cellphones through checkpoints. And sometimes civilian and security staff help.

“We’ve seen [workers and others] … compromised in some way and utilized to smuggle in cellphones,” Jacobs said

Relatives or friends may bring phones under the assumption the prisoner will call more often and they will no longer have to pay for collect calls on prison phones.

Inmates have been caught trying to get the phones from visitors into cellblocks by secreting them in body cavities. That’s where a phone was discovered on Texas death row.

“When an inmate will go to that extreme you know it’s valuable,” Jacobs said.

Phones that get through undiscovered are usually found scattered around, usually secreted in places where they cannot be connected to any one inmate.

“If they are able to get a cellphone, they will break the phone down,” Jacobs said. “They will take the SIM card and hide it somewhere. They will take the battery and hide it somewhere else. They will take the charger they built and hide it somewhere else. They will scatter the pieces all over.”