State leaders, grand jurors, fight use of cell phones by inmates to commit organized crime

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — In what local leaders call a rare move, the 34th and 35th State Grand Jurors have released a Grand Jury report — with the goal of exposing the use of contraband cell phones in prison to commit organized crimes.

“Really we’ve been singing this tune about contraband cell phones for awhile, but it ultimately occurred to us that we can no longer in good conscious send dangerous criminals to prison and tell the community that we had protected them when they are able to continue to run their criminal organizations as much as they ever did on the inside of prisons as they did on the outside,” says Chief Attorney for the State Grand Jury Division, Creighton Waters.

Attorney General Alan Wilson highlighted three recent cases of organized crime rings, saying 90% of illegal activities orchestrated from behind bars would stop if state prisons could jam contraband cell phones.

“Whether it’s meth trafficking, complex financial crimes, or sexual exploitation of minors, each criminal enterprise was made possible by the access that inmates had to cell phones behind prison walls,” he says.

Wilson and others are calling on U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) to allow state prisons the right to use jamming technology that currently only federal prisons can have.

Leaders say prisoners have orchestrated child sexual abuse, money laundering, and in the case of the McCoy brothers, used cell phones to interact with Mexican drug cartels — distributing 630 kilograms of meth all from behind bars.

“They’re able to facilitate violent acts from behind prison walls because we can’t add a simple sentence into a federal regulation,” he says.

Currently technology used by federal prisons can jam an entire area. Wilson says state prisons must rely on jamming individual phone signals as they’re discovered — sometimes taking days.

“And so while it is helpful, it is not as good as a system that would completely eliminate any cell communication from inside prison walls,” he says.

The two Grand Juries are made up of 36 citizens from across SC.

To read the 34th State Grand Jury’s report, click here. To read the 35th State Grand Jury’s report, click here.