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| Smoking Phones: Prisoners illegally communicate |
| By montereycountyweekly.com - Sara Rubin |
| Published: 03/15/2012 |
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California -- Damon Valery logged his holiday wishes early last year, in a Facebook posting Dec. 1. “This is the worst part of the year 4 me cause of the holidays,” Valery wrote, “so i’m saying happy holidays now cause i don’t know when i’ll b back!” Valery had been serving a 25-year-to-life sentence since 1999, and was transferred to Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad last August. He was convicted of killing Dante Jones, his girlfriend’s 2-year-old nephew. On March 6, Valery was found unresponsive in his cell and transported to Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, where he died shortly after. The prison’s investigative service unit is looking into his death as a possible homicide. “Compared 2 some of the madness that’s going on in the world my situation ain’t that bad,” Valery wrote on his Facebook wall April 1 last year, “because somewhere, somebody lost their life or least didn’t get 2 eat!!” That harsh irony is exaggerated by the fact that Valery’s affectionate, if sporadic, posts to friends and relatives were illegal. He posted using a mobile device – contraband that can fetch $1,000 in prison, or $100 to borrow for one call. Communications in prison are closely watched. Phone calls are capped at 15 minutes, recorded and interrupted by a voice alert reminding interlocutors they’re on the phone with an inmate. Similarly, all outgoing mail is stamped to identify its origination point, so recipients can discard unwanted letters. “A lot of people would choose not to talk to an inmate,” Salinas Valley State Prison spokesman Lt. Michael Nilsson says. “I think it’s important that people know who they’re talking to. It’s not the same as on the streets, where you meet someone at a night club.” But cell phone use in California prisons has been rapidly rising, with 1,400 phones discovered in 2007 and more than 15,000 found in 2011. In response, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 26 late last fall, making it a misdemeanor to possess a phone in prison, and to smuggle one in. Read More. |
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The major reasons that cell phones get into a correctional facility is from someone on the outside smuggling them into the facility through a visit or in boxes or materials being received in the facility or through work crews who go outside to do public service tasks and return to the prison or sometimes by officers. Unfortunately due to recent court case decisions you cannot strip search inmates after they are arrested and brought into a facility unless they meet certain criteria such as a drug arrest or an officer witnesses them secreting contraband during transit.