The U.S. Republican Senator passed federal legislation in March. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina will directly authorize state prisons to use cell phone jammer devices to turn off inmates’ cell phones. Co-sponsors of the same bill introduced by the US House of Representatives include South Carolina Republican representatives Will Timmons, Tom Rice and Ralph Norman.
The proposal was unsuccessful in both houses. Sterling hopes that the report will trigger a vote.
“I don’t know what else we need,” Sterling said. “I hope they can hold a hearing. I hope the industry will come to Washington and explain why things that work and ensure public safety are opposed.”
In November last year, 5 detainees and 10 others were accused of using their mobile phones to extort more than US$560,000 from 442 members of the country’s armed forces. A few days later, 17 people, including four prisoners, were accused of trafficking in cell phones and drugs through elaborate systems that contributed to hostile gang violence in prisons.
In 2010, a police officer Li was shot and killed six times in front of his house by a prisoner orchestrated by a cell phone. The surviving Captain Robert Johnson testified with Sterling before the FCC in 2017.
In the last fiscal year, approximately 3,900 cell phones and phone accessories were confiscated in South Carolina prisons. This is a reduction of 3,600 people from 2016-17, when the agency began installing 50-foot-long screens around the medium and highest security prisons to prevent rollovers. But mobile phones are still smuggled, sometimes with the help of prison guards, and dropped by drones.