5/31/2023 0 Comments Contraband in penal institution“Phones can be hard to find, and there’s a lot of money in introducing contraband,” said Terry Pelz, a prison consultant and former warden who advocates tougher punishments for guards caught with contraband. And it falls to prosecutors in the rural, cash-strapped regions where prisons are typically located to decide whether to spend resources on criminals who are already in prison or on local law enforcement officers. Critics say that without serious consequences, there is little to stanch the flow of illicit cellphones - and the cash that goes with them - into Texas prisons. Prison officials said one challenge was linking the smuggled phones to prisoners or correctional officers for prosecution, because the devices were secreted away in spots that were hard to find, or found in common areas. ![]() Just 5 percent of cellphone smuggling cases investigated by the Criminal Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General from 2009 to 2013 resulted in a criminal sentence, according to documents obtained from the office through a public information request. The discovery of buried items at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Ferguson Unit in Midway was unusual for its scale and its subterranean location, but the fact that no one was prosecuted is not.Ī Texas Tribune investigation has found that few inmates or correctional officers face legal consequences for smuggling cellphones even as prison officials have intensified efforts to keep the devices out of prisons. ![]() Nearly a year later, no arrests have been made in the elaborate trafficking attempt. Armed with shovels, correctional officers at a prison in East Texas last summer unearthed a cache filled with hundreds of smuggled items, including 45 cellphones and 52 chargers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |