COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) – Millions of dollars will be spent to address what South Carolina's prison warden is calling the biggest threat to public safety: the smuggling of cellphones into prisons.
Law enforcement has linked these cellphones to drug trafficking, assassination orders to prison guards and even the deadliest prison riot in South Carolina history.
“This is a matter of life and death. It impacts prison safety, it impacts prison stability and it impacts public safety,” said South Carolina Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Sterling.
About $11 million in the new state budget will introduce no-cellphone programs to several state prisons.
This will enable illegal mobile phones in prisons to be identified and suspended by telecommunications operators within days.
“There's no reason not to do it,” Sterling said.
The Department of Corrections' budget is short of the roughly $30 million Sterling had hoped to roll out the program to all prisons at once this year and continue to fund it thereafter.
“I think we can go with the funding they've given us, about seven or eight, and hopefully we'll get more funding next year,” Sterling said, adding that he hopes to have the technology in the first batch of prisons by later this year.
Sterling has petitioned the federal government for years to allow states to block cellphone signals in prisons, but to no avail.
The cell phone ban program is the compromise they reached to address the problem, and the Department of Corrections said a pilot of the program at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville was successful.
South Carolina is the first state in the nation to implement this type of tool, and other states are taking notice, Sterling said.
“People are coming to South Carolina to see what we're doing,” he said, “from multiple states. We're leading the nation in cellphone enforcement.”
The program is one of several tactics the Department of Corrections is using to prevent contraband from entering, including searches, scanners, drones and nets.
Sterling also said the most important thing that can be done to keep the prison safe is to hire more qualified officers, which he said will be his top budget priority next year.
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