Hoping to stop the direction federal prisoners from the prison crimes, President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday a ban on cell phone use by prisoners. The Federal Bureau of Prisons cell phones confiscated more than 2,600 of minimum security facilities and nearly 600 federal security institutions last year. Now that this bill has become law, prison gangs will no longer be able to use cell phones to direct criminal attacks on individuals, to decide territory for drug distribution, behavior, or credit card fraud “said Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-California, a sponsor of the bill.
Making it illegal for criminals to use mobile phones and wireless devices in a federal prison reduced to the rapport and helps keep our communities safe,” said his Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa
The new law requires a government study to be published in a year to measure the effectiveness of the new ban.
The law prohibits not only cell phones, for which, according to a government report, inmates will pay up to $ 1,000, but other wireless devices as well, and “calls up to one year imprisonment for those found guilty of trying to pass smuggle a an inmate. ”
Therefore, this is what bothers me about this law: no nuances. One person is in possession of a mobile phone zie has been used to coordinate criminal activity is not distinguished in this statute of someone who is in possession of a mobile phone that has been using zie kindly chat with members family, or to speak with a lawyer who is filing an appeal in a wrongful conviction.
I hope that the seizure of a mobile device would be followed by an investigation into its use before formal charges were filed, but I suspect that most federal prisons are not eager to use their discretion in the implementation of this law.
Especially when a conviction for possession of media and additional sentence time served. What’s more money in the pockets of the housing of many companies of our federal prisoners in private / outsourced prisons?