Oklahoma City-Thousands of illegal mobile phones fall into the hands of prisoners who use devices to commit crimes. However, prison officials testified on Monday that the best way to prevent this from happening is to prohibit the use of cell phone jammer.
Prison officials in Oklahoma and South Carolina testified to the Oklahoma State Senate committee about the effectiveness of cell phone interference technology. Federal law prohibits the government from using this technology that the wireless industry opposes.
Last year, Oklahoma confiscated more than 5,200 cell phones smuggled by prisoners. Mike Carpenter, a security officer with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, said that this is down from the approximately 7,500 people a year ago, but the problem is still serious.
According to Carpenter, fighting between rival gangs in Oklahoma prisons expanded rapidly last month, and prohibited mobile phones were used in the vicinity of several other prisons. One prisoner was killed and more than a dozen people were injured.
Carpenter said: "Do you think jam will work (on the phone)? No doubt,"
Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association spokesperson Gerard Keegan said that the wireless industry opposed the use of mobile phones to interfere with signals in prisons mainly because of concerns about shielding legitimate users' signals.
Instead, he said, the organization supports a "management access" system, which uses technology to determine the signals of smuggled calls in prisons. He said that the team also supports further testing of mobile phone interference technology.
The House of Representatives and Senate are still waiting to use the federal law of Jammer State.
"My proposal is simple," Republican Senator James Lankford told the Senate earlier this year. "Mobile phones are blocked in prisons to protect our guards, protect our families and prevent criminal activities in prisons."
Last year, federal officials at a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland tested the microjammer and stated that they could turn off the phone signal in the prison cell when the device was operating normally for about 6 meters.