By MEG KINNARD, Associated Press COLUMBIA, S.C. — Mar 28, 2019
Federal legislation proposed Thursday would give state prison officials the ability they have long sought to jam the signals of cellphones smuggled to inmates within their walls.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and U.S. Rep. David Kustoff of Tennessee introduced companion bills in both chambers, The Associated Press has learned.
The legislation could help provide a solution to a problem prison officials have said represents the top security threat to their institutions. Corrections chiefs across the country have long argued for the ability to jam the signals, saying the phones – smuggled into their institutions by the thousands, by visitors, errant employees, and even delivered by drone — are dangerous because inmates use them to carry out crimes and plot violence both inside and outside prison.
But the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the nation’s airwaves, has said a decades-old prohibition on interrupting signals at state-level institutions prevents the agency from permitting jamming on that level. Wireless industry groups have said they worry signal-blocking technologies could thwart legal calls.
Prison officials, including South Carolina Corrections Director Bryan Stirling, have pushed for the ability to jam signals, saying it’s the best way to combat the dangerous devices. In 2017, Stirling testified at an FCC hearing in Washington alongside Robert Johnson, a former South Carolina corrections officer nearly killed in 2010 in a hit orchestrated by an inmate using an illegal phone…
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