The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

December 27, 2008

State trying to keep cells from prisons

By Mannix Porterfield

In a novelty tune decades ago, Johnny Cash sang about swiping a car from a Detroit assembly line, one piece at a time.

Cash wound up with a bizarre auto boasting parts from so many years of production he couldn’t put an exact model description on his creation.

That isn’t apt to happen inside West Virginia’s prisons.

But a move is afoot by the Division of Corrections to make sure convicts aren’t getting cell phones, one piece at a time.

“Cell phones are contraband,” Military Affairs and Public Safety communications director Joe Thornton says.

“You can’t have them anyway. It’s in the category of weapons, cigarettes and everything else.”

Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein doesn’t want inmates getting parts of wireless devices, such as a keypad, battery or antenna, smuggled into their cells by visitors, then assembling the phones.

“If I go down and tour a jail, I have to leave my cell phone in my car or in the administrator’s office,” Thornton said.

“You can’t even take them in the back.”

Rubenstein, likewise, is no exception to the rule, but in current policy, that regulation is applicable to assembled phones.

Of late, however, the DOC chief has advanced a bill to the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority that would tighten the rules so that even parts cannot be smuggled in.

“Obviously, it’s a security reason for inmates to have cell phones,” Thornton said.

“To not pose any further risk, you don’t allow any of that stuff to go back, even on tours. Even if Jim Rubenstein goes back, he has to leave his out there. No cell phones are allowed past the entry point.”

Thornton said the DOC wants to make sure no inmate can get a phone, and his concern is mirrored in penal institutions across the country.

“We want to propose a new bill that makes it against policy, against code, whatever, to bring even a part of a cell phone in. What’s going on nationwide is people are smuggling in the keypad and then the next person will smuggle in the battery. And they’ll get it to an inmate and he will put it together and have a cell phone, which is illegal.”

Thornton recalled his former days in the military when enterprising servicemen pulled off the same ploy to steal firearms, piece by piece, starting with a firing pin one week and the bolt assembly the next.

“People always find ways to circumvent the system,” he said.

Many reasons drive the anti-phone policy, but security is the prime concern, Thornton said.

“Security proves one of the biggest in terms of being able to contact anybody without somebody knowing,” he said.

Except for conversations with their attorneys, all calls involving inmates are monitored.

“If they had cell phones, we wouldn’t be able to do that,” Thornton said.

“Monitoring is a safety risk, too, because you have gangs, you have people trying to smuggle. There are all kinds of different issues related to the security — the security of staff, security of the facility and security of the public. It’s just one of those things.”

Sen. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, a co-chairman of the committee, endorses the bill which would be considered when the 2009 session opens in February, although the retiring lawmaker won’t be around to provide input.

“If they have any fear of using one for communications to disrupt the prisons, I’d say most everybody would support that,” Love said.

“They don’t have to worry too much about it now.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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