Oklahoma’s governor ordered several of the state’s top officials on Friday to begin looking into technological solutions, including signal jamming, to eliminate the threat of contraband cellphones in prisons.
Gov. Kevin Stitt issued the order to the Secretary of Public Safety, Secretary of Digital Transformation and Administration and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections in light of the mid-September prison riots that involved an estimated 150 to 200 inmates across six prisons. One inmate was killed in the riots, 36 other inmates were hospitalized and several corrections officers were injured, the DOC said earlier.
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Department of Corrections investigators suspect that the riots were orchestrated and coordinated through contraband cellphones.
“Contraband cellphones in our state prisons have become a serious public safety concern in Oklahoma,” Stitt said in a prepared statement. “This is a technology issue that must be answered with a technology solution in order to efficiently and effectively improve safety for our inmates, Department of Correction employees and citizens of Oklahoma.”
The order directs state officials to explore technology-based solutions, including geo-location systems, cellphone jammers, micro cellphone jammers, controlled access systems and hybrid systems.
The Federal Communications Commission bars the use of signal-jamming devices on the public airwaves, but because contraband cellphones are an issue across the country, the FCC has shown willingness to work with states, allowing some cellphone-jamming tests and field hearings on the matter, The Associated Press has reported.
In addition to Stitt, DOC Interim Director Scott Crow and multiple other state officials have dubbed the use of cellphones by inmates a public safety threat.
In spite of their incarceration, some inmates have used cellphones to lead large drug-trafficking organizations.
“While our staff seize thousands every year, contraband cellphones cry out for a technological solution,” Crow said. “With this order, we will proceed with urgency, researching the most effective and efficient methods to fight this dangerous problem.”
The order also directs state officials to research how federal authorities handle the matter and to research the liability of cellphone service providers.
Of note is convicted murderer Slint Tate, who was able to, from a prison cell, listen to police raid his girlfriend’s home in Miami, Oklahoma. Minutes later, Tate, who was sitting in his prison cell at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, was able to put word out through texts and calls about the raid.
Tate was convicted in 2018 of conspiring with six others to help sell methamphetamine in central and eastern Oklahoma. He used smuggled cellphones to run the meth ring from prison so his friends could profit from it because he already was serving a life-without-parole term for the 1999 murder of Delaware County Reserve Deputy Vernie Milford Roberts, the World has reported.
In 2011, corrections officers seized about 3,100 cellphones. In 2016, they seized about 9,800, and in 2017, that number fell to about 6,900.
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