Anti-mobile jammers in prison: technology out of touch with reality

François Bayrou, the new Keeper of the Seals, said he was in favor of setting up jammers to prevent the use of cell phones in prison. Established in some establishments, tested several times, this technology has as many advantages as disadvantages.

“I am in favor of setting up jammers in prisons.” The new Minister of Justice, François Bayrou, like other justice ministers before him like Christiane Taubira in 2015, reacted Tuesday on BFMTV and RMC to the phenomenon of mobile phones in prison. Photos of supervisors published on social networks, detained filming themselves in a swimming pool cell or smoking cannabis … The problem has been recurrent for several years, despite attempts by the authorities to stop this practice.

Since 2002, the law authorizes the installation of cell phone jammer in prisons. Currently, 804 devices are available in French prisons, according to our information. Problem: Technology is often outdated compared to the evolution of mobile phones. To upgrade and acquire a new generation of jammers, three million euros have been provided by the Ministry of Justice. But on one condition.

“The objective is to ensure that the techniques in place do not become quickly obsolete, and therefore useless, in a context of permanent technological evolution (new frequencies 5G, for example)”, explains one on the side of the penitentiary administration, while indicating that the future service chosen will have to ensure the adjustment, the maintenance but especially the follow-up of the technological evolutions.

 

Tests of this new technology are currently in progress, the last phase of which began in early June, before an initial commissioning in early 2018. This investment by the prison administration responds to ever increasing seizures of mobile phones in cells. When there were more than 27,520 in 2014, the authorities counted 33,521 in 2016, even though systematic full searches after the return of the parlors were removed by section 57 of the Prison Act of 2009, including the decree of application had been made in 2014.

A phenomenon deplored by the prison supervisors. “The possession of mobile phone in prison is one of the scourges that have persisted for several years, it is a real problem,” said Christopher Dorangeville, national secretary of the CGT penitentiary, which highlights the security problems who weigh on the agents. “The problem today is that prisoners are filming with their cell phones,” he continues. Images or videos, including prison staff, that can be sent outside, as well as information about security systems or potential cell extraction to promote escape.

 

If the installation of jammers is greeted enthusiastically by supervisors, they believe that this is not the only solution against the use of mobile phones in prison. “In the prison environment, the technological specificity is very concrete: do not scramble the communications specific to the prison administration, the personal communications and those of the neighborhood”, recalls the representative of the CGT, which militates for the restoration of the excavations systematic exits from the parlors, and a reinforcement of security in a wider perimeter around the centers, to avoid the projection of parcels over the walls.

“We spend crazy money for inoperative devices, the authorities spend their time buying jammers but they are still lagging behind the technological developments of phones,” regrets Marie Crétenot, head of advocacy at the International Observatory prisons (OIP). “But we do not ask why detainees get a phone.”

Discussions around jamming would thus hide a wider debate on communication in detention. For the OIP, “in the majority of cases”, detainees use their cell phones to communicate with their relatives. “If we do not think about the introduction of mobile phones in prison, we will not solve the problem of flows,” insists Marie Crétenot. For prisoners, owning a mobile phone would allow them to reach their relatives when they are not at work or at school: the use of telephone booths in prison is allowed until 17:30.

 

An experiment is currently being conducted by the prison administration at the detention center of Montmédy, in the Meuse, to install