In most jurisdictions, prison inmates are forbidden from possessing mobile phones due to their ability to communicate with the outside world and other security issues.
They provide inmates the ability to make and receive unauthorized phone calls, send email and text messages, use social media, and follow news pertaining to their case, among other forbidden uses.
However, these calls can be prohibitively expensive, a situation which has sparked controversy in light of the fact that they represent a source of profit for private prisons.
[1] Federal prosecutors charged five South Carolina prisoners with conning at least 442 service members out of a total of more than half a million dollars in November 2018.
Two other South Carolina prisoners, John William Dobbins and Carl Richard Smith await trial for multiple scams operated using contraband cell phones out of Lee Correctional Institution, including one catfishing scam that ended in the suicide of army veteran Jared Johns.
[11] Laws have been passed in various jurisdictions, placing penalties on inmates who possess mobile devices as well as staff who smuggle them in.
Exceptions to this law have been considered for prisons, though there is concern that a cell phone could be a guard's lifeline in a crisis, and other rescuers may need to use them for communication.
[6] This Managed Access System (MAS) technology was first deployed at Mississippi State Penitentiary in 2010 by Tecore Networks.
This technology detects the presence of the ferrous metal components (antenna, vibrator, speaker) that are in cell phones.
[16] In 2010, Robert Johnson, a prison guard at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, was shot six times by a gunman hired by an inmate using a contraband cell phone.