On May 10, 2007, Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons signed into law AB-106, a bill making it a felony for prisoners to possess a cell phone in prison or for a person to furnish a prisoner with a cell phone. Anyone charged with one of those offenses faces up to four years incarceration in a state prison. A person who brings a cell phone into a prison, but doesn’t give it to a prisoner could face misdemeanor charges.

The possession of cell phones in Nevada state prison was already prohibited by prison rules. The bill was considered necessary because a cell phone had been used by a prisoner to set up a 2005 escape. Nevada prisons have prisoner land lines which are monitored and recorded and which charge the call recipient outrageous rates to boot.

Prison officials state that signs will be posted inside and outside of state prisons to remind visitors and staff of the penalties for bringing a cell phone into a prison.

Source: Las Vegas Sun

Prisoners can make telephone calls only collect and to persons previously placed on a list limited to 10; calls can be recorded and monitored; calls are automatically terminated when the outside party tries to transfer the call or make it a three-way call. The monitoring feature is disabled for persons identified and verified as attorneys. The telephone list can be changed every 120 days, or more frequently under some circumstances. Public officials may not be placed on the lists, but other arrangements are made to contact such "privileged persons" on a case by case basis. These calls are subject to monitoring.

Courts are divided over whether there is any First Amendment right to telephone access at all. The court does not resolve this question but upholds the restrictions under the Turner standard. They are content-neutral and unrelated to suppressing expression. They are logically connected to legitimate security interests in avoiding escape plots and the planning of assaults, other violent acts, and harassment of people outside prison. It is a "common sense assumption" that telephone restrictions serve legitimate penological purposes. Prison officials need not present evidence that the evils they wish to prevent have actually occurred.

Prisoners have alternative means of ...

The plaintiff civilian employee found a microphone by her desk; her supervisor admitted he had bugged her because he thought there were racial problems in the office. He was suspended; nothing happened to her. She had no claim against the department under the federal Crime Control and Safe Streets Act because the elements of intent and interception were missing (nobody knew if the microphone had ever actually worked). She had no Title VII claim because no adverse employment action was taken against her. Her retaliation claim is unsupported by any evidence or any adverse employment effect. See: Thomas v. Ohio Dept. of Rehabilitation and Correction, 36 F.Supp.2d 997 (S.D.Ohio 1997).

Court Upholds Photocopying of Jail Prisoner's Mail, Suppression Denied

The detained criminal defendant had an expectation of privacy in his non-legal mail that he may assert by moving to suppress evidence in his prosecution. Although applicable regulations permit prison authorities to inspect and read incoming and outgoing non-legal mail, "that permission is not boundless." (289) Incoming mail may be read "to maintain security or monitor a particular problem confronting an inmate"; outgoing mail, if there is reason to believe it "would facilitate criminal activity." (289, quoting regulations) The fact that the prisoner signs a form acknowledging that his correspondence may be opened and read "should be construed in light of applicable law and the necessities that obviously gave rise to the form. The reason for the regulations the government cites is to assure that prison officials have all the authority they need to maintain institutional security for both inmates and staff, and to further the legitimate objectives of the correctional system. ... He was not signing away any remnant of protection the law otherwise might have afforded him." The government seems to have recognized this in seeking a warrant.

The defendant's challenge to the breadth of the warrant, which was ...

by Matt Clarke

On June 1, 2007, the Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts released an audit report critical of the funding practices of the state's Department of Corrections (DOC).

The DOC operates 19 prisons, 10 work release centers, three community work centers and a pre-release center, and contracts with two out-of-state facilities to accommodate its more than 25,600 in-custody state prisoners. The department is funded at $349 million a year, which works out to $37 per prisoner per day -- about half the national average. Due to this underfunding, guards are poorly paid, aging prisons are poorly maintained and prisoner healthcare is abysmal, leading to lawsuits.

Instead of seeking a more appropriate level of funding, the DOC has been trying to close the budget gap -- estimated to reach $30 million in 2008 -- by accepting contractual kickbacks for expensive prison phone calls and by hitting prisoners with various fees that have totaled $13 million since January 2001.

A 15-minute out-of-state phone call originating from an Alabama prison costs a prisoner's family $14.15, or almost a dollar a minute. This money is often collected from financially-strapped families whose primary breadwinner is unable to contribute to their income due ...

AT&T Settlement Includes Fines, Reimbursement for Overcharging Recipients of Phone Calls From Washington Prisoners

by Michael Rigby

Telephone service provider AT&T has agreed to reimburse the families and friends of Washington prisoners who were overcharged on collect phone calls made from two state prisons during a four month period in 2005.

Also pursuant to the December 13, 2007 settlement agreement, AT&T will pay $302,705 in fines levied by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) for the unauthorized overages.

In August 2005, Seattle resident Richard Laxton filed a complaint with the UTC noting a discrepancy in the charges applied to two collect phone calls made from the Airway Heights prison. AT&T charged Laxton an already outrageous $15.75 for a 20-minute phone call from the prison. But Zero Plus Dialing, a billing agent for AT&T, charged an even more egregious $22.22 for the same phone call.

According to the UTC investigation, Zero Plus Dialing was charging a connection fee of $3.95, plus 89 cents per minute, plus a 47-cent prison surcharge for calls made from Airway Heights and the Washington State Penitentiary. The UTC found that Zero Plus Dialing's billing scheme exceeded the allowed prices of $3.95 for a connection fee ...

Over 1,000 cellphones and Blackberrys were confiscated in California's 33 prisons in the past year. While such contraband was at a trickle seven years ago, the technology has reduced the size of these items to permit a veritable flood today -- 221 alone at the Solano State Prison in the first six months of 2007. At the going rate of $400 to $600, some employees have been caught smuggling up to 50 phones at a time.

Anthony Kane, Associate Director for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), told legislators recently, "It's a tremendous problem." The dangers are plain. Gang members can use the phones to clandestinely direct activities on the streets from behind the walls, noted Gary Hearnsberger of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Hardcore Gang Division. Imprisoned gang leaders could direct killings, run drug operations or intimidate witnesses, he stated. Although mail and normal phone calls are screened to prevent such activities, cellphones escape oversight. Of course, if technology can permit monitoring, this could prove a boon to catching and prosecuting such miscreants.

State Senator Alex Padilla wrote Corrections Secretary James Tilton requesting a full investigation, noting that such devices in the hands of maximum security prisoners ...

Jaime Jasso, a California state prisoner, made several phone calls to someone outside of prison named Ruben. Guards monitored those calls and discovered that their purpose was for Passo to give Ruben directions for obtaining drugs and supplying them to three different women for delivery to three prisoners. The women were caught trying to visit the prisoners to deliver the drugs. Jasso was convicted of three counts of conspiracy to transport the drugs into the prison after the trial court gave jury instructions which did not include an instruction for a single, ongoing conspiracy. Jasso appealed.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal of California, 6th Appellate District, found that the jury might have found that the three incidents were the result of one agreement between Jasso and Ruben to smuggle the drugs. On that basis, Jasso's convictions were vacated and the case remanded to the trial court. See: California v. Jasso, 142 Cal.App.4th 1213, 48 Cal.Rptr.3d 697 (Cal.App. 6 Dist., 2006).

On December 3, 2007, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals held that partial state funding of a religious-based prison program in Iowa was unconstitutional.

The Court further held that InnerChange, a division of Prison Fellowship Ministries, was not obligated to repay $1.5 million it has received in state funding since the program began in 1999.

The Eighth Circuit decision is the latest in a string of rulings in 2007 that prohibit using government money to promote religion, said George Washington University law professor Robert Tuttle, who is an expert on faith-based initiatives.

?The main thing it does is reaffirm the obligation of government not to fund programs that intermingle secular and religious content,? said Tuttle. ?The federal government has come to terms with that over the last year. Even when it has won cases, there hasn?t been a single decision that would allow government to intertwine secular and religious content.?

In February 2003 Iowa prisoners and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Iowa challenging the state?s partial funding of the program. In 2005 the district court found the state funded program to ...

California detainee David Windham appealed a decision holding that recordings of jail-placed phone conversations were lawful and could be used for conviction purposes.

Windham asked his girlfriend for money while shopping. She refused and he followed her to her car and forced his way in. He physically abused her and forced her to have sex with him, then threatened to kill her if she told the police. An officer noticed damage and swelling to her face and arrested Windham.

Awaiting trial and in custody, he called his girlfriend repeatedly and mentioned events leading up to his arrest. When informed that the recordings would be used in his prosecution, he filed a motion to suppress. The court denied the suppression motion and ruled that there was implied consent to record the phone calls based on three separate warnings Windham received prior to placing the call. These warnings included the written jail rules, posted signs, and a recording heard by both parties when the calls were placed.

On appeal, the California Court of Appeals held that the recordings were legal under Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 2510, and the California Invasion ...