Wireless industry to blame for contraband cellphones, according to former SC prisons chief

The wireless industry is largely to blame for the proliferation of cellphones in prisons in South Carolina and across the nation, according to the state's former prisons chief.

Mobile phones used illegally in prisons enable dangerous inmates to run criminal enterprises from behind bars, and the phones helped spread violence this week at Lee Correctional Institution, where seven inmates died and 22 were injured, according to Gov. Henry McMaster, current state prisons chief Bryan Stirling and federal court testimony just this week from FBI investigators. 

Jon Ozmint, an Anderson native who served as director of the state Department of Corrections from 2003 to 2011, contends that the wireless industry and mobile-phone companies are complicit in the crimes.

Death and violence in SC prisons:How Lee Correctional Institution puts gangs before safety

More:South Carolina prison where 7 inmates died had equipment to block illegal cellphone use

"They could care less how many people get killed," Ozmint said. "They know the calls are illegal. They could stop the calls."

McMaster and Stirling blamed prisoners' cellphones with helping spread the deadly melee at Lee Correctional from one unconnected dormitory to two others.

Cellular companies could have determined that the "originating phone was an illegal phone in Lee prison," Ozmint said. "Instead of programming their tower to kill that call, the carriers intentionally connected that illegal phone to another illegal phone at LCI. As a result, the gang retaliation spread and others were killed."

Ozmint, who now runs a law firm in Columbia, said wireless companies are more concerned with making money.

"Prepaid, anonymous phones are the overwhelming phones of choice in America's prisons and jails. The prepaid minutes and data access loaded onto those phones are highly profitable for the cellular carriers," he said. "It is not shocking that those same carriers show no interest in solving this problem."

Ozmint said the wireless industry's decision to erect a cellphone tower in Lee County that is closer to the prison than downtown Bishopville proves his point. 

"They know where all of these calls are coming from," he said.

More:Who are the 7 dead? Details about each inmate killed in fight at Lee County prison in South Carolina

A top wireless industry trade association, CTIA, issued a statement Friday afternoon responding to Ozmint's comments:

“Contraband cellphones have no place in prisons. We welcome the FCC’s (Federal Communications Commission) continued focus on this problem and we remain committed to working with the corrections community to enable workable solutions. Most immediately, we look forward to engaging constructively with corrections officials from across the country at the task force meeting we are hosting in Washington later this month.”

Illegal phones lead to crimes — and more phones

A federal jury on Friday convicted an inmate at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia who had a contraband cellphone and another man of dealing drugs and plotting to kill a woman.

Prosecutors said inmate Michael Young Jr., 32, used his cellphone to run a marijuana distribution business with Vance Volious Jr., 36, of Columbia.

Young also used his cellphone to start a dialogue with an FBI agent posing as a foreign explosives dealer as part of a plot to obtain a bomb to kill Young's ex-wife. Young was serving a 50-year sentence at the time for previously trying to kill the same woman and murdering her father in 2007, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Contraband cellphones turn up at prisons throughout the U.S., but experts say the problem appears to be more acute in the South, where correctional officers earn less than their counterparts in other regions.

At an FCC meeting March 2017, the agency's chairman, Ajit Pai, detailed three incidents in Georgia and North Carolina involving inmates who had illegal cellphones.

In one of the incidents, Pai said, inmates in Georgia sent a text to another prisoner's wife demanding $250. When she couldn't gather the money, the inmates texted her an image of her husband with burns, broken fingers and the word "rat" carved on his face.

Pai said a 9-month-old baby was fatally shot after an inmate used a cellphone to order the child's death in retaliation for the death of a gang member. The baby's mother, grandmother and a family friend were severely wounded trying to protect him.

"In North Carolina," Pai said, "a member of the Bloods street gang serving a life sentence used a contraband cellphone to mastermind the kidnapping of the father of the Assistant District Attorney who had prosecuted him.

"During the abduction, the kidnappers and the inmate exchanged at least 123 calls and text messages as they discussed how to kill and bury the victim without a trace," he said. "Fortunately, the FBI rescued the victim in the nick of time and saved his life."

Besides using them in crimes, Ozmint said, inmates rely on cellphones to arrange for the delivery of more contraband phones.

He said these phones are frequently placed inside footballs or soccer balls. Accomplices who drive close to prisons on adjacent country roads then hurl these items over fences as inmates are returning to their dorms late at night or headed to the recreation yard early in the morning, Ozmint said.

When he was director of the state corrections department, Ozmint said, prison officials typically confiscated about 3,000 contraband phones a year. He said an equal number of phones probably made it into the prisons.

Ozmint said some of the phones are smuggled in by corrections officers and visitors. But he believes that number decreased after his department installed metal detectors and X-ray machines at prisons that everyone — employees and visitors alike — must pass through.

More:In wake of inmate deaths at Lee Correctional, records show South Carolina prisons are understaffed

Despite those security measures and a declining inmate population, prison officials seized a total of 14,000 cellphones and accessories at South Carolina's correctional facilities in 2016 and 2017.

Sharing the belief that most of these phones are coming in over prison fences, Gov. Henry McMaster in February ordered the South Carolina State Guard to start patrolling the perimeters of these facilities.

"We are doing it," said Robert Dingle, administrative coordinator for the South Carolina State Guard. He said he didn't have any results "to share with the general public."

FCC actions on mobile phones in prisons

Corrections officials from South Carolina and other states have spent years urging the FCC to allow them to jam cellphone transmissions at prisons. The agency thus far has refused, citing a 1934 federal law that prohibits interference with authorized radio communications.

Ozmint said the agency is relying on an "absurd interpretation" of the law. He doesn't understand how "illegal calls from illegal phones" can be considered an "authorized" communication.

"The FCC is nothing more than the lapdog of the wireless industry," he said.

In an email Friday, FCC spokeswoman Tina Pelkey said Pai "has been a vocal advocate for action on combating contraband cellphones."

More:Tech company founder says Templeton can't fulfill vow to jam cellphones at SC prisons

While it has not budged on the jamming issue, the FCC did decide at its meeting in March 2017 to streamline the process for installing some other types of technologies that prison officials can use to block illegal cellphones. The decision came after nearly four years of deliberations.

"For far too long, the FCC did not move forward," Pai acknowledged at the meeting.

One of the most widely used technologies for deterring illegal cellphones in prisons is called managed access. In that system, towers or antennas intercept all calls. Calls made by authorized users are permitted to go through while calls from unauthorized devices are blocked.

Since 2010, managed-access systems have been installed at 52 prisons in 17 states.

A Maryland-based company, Tecore Networks, has received a three-year, $1.5 million contract to install a managed-access system at Lee Correctional Institution. The system was in place Sunday in one dorm at the prison where no violence took place. The equipment for the rest of the prison is expected to be operational by the end of May.

Ozmint said he has doubts that the managed-access system will be successful at Lee Correctional Institution. He suspects wireless carriers will simply boost the signal from the nearby cell tower to overwhelm the system.

At the March 2017 meeting, the FCC also agreed to start accepting comments on two other technologies that Ozmint and other correctional experts believe would prevent illegal cellphones from being used in prisons.

One option calls for using cell towers to create "no-service" areas at prisons. The other would require software to be installed on cellphones so that they could be temporarily disabled by radio beacons installed at prisons.

More:FBI sting uncovers bomb plot, drug-smuggling operation in South Carolina prison

Last June, CTIA submitted comments to the FCC expressing opposition to both approaches.

Setting up no-service zones around prisons "would have the effect of preventing legitimate communications, including public safety communications on commercial networks, on prison grounds and beyond," stated the comments authored by three of the group's executives.

They also said the FCC should "refrain from dictating use of a beacon system that would require software embedded in wireless devices."

"It would involve a sweeping government mandate," the CTIA executives wrote. "Further, it would be ineffective, burdensome, and costly, with a lengthy implementation process. It also would pose a cybersecurity threat to public safety by introducing a nationwide capability that could be used to block legitimate calls."

Follow Kirk Brown on Twitter @KirkBrown_AIM and email him at kirk.brown@independentmail.com