Gang Violence and Drug Trafficking? There's an App for That

    These days, most prisoners have two cell numbers, one for their room and one for their phone. A New York Times article this week discussed how smuggled cellular phones, forbidden in all American Federal and State prisons, have empowered inmates, especially with the advent of smart phones. While some use their cellphones to stay in touch with their families, update their Facebooks, or just to play FarmVille, others "call up phone directories, maps and photographs for criminal purposes, corrections officials and prison security experts say. Gang violence and drug trafficking, they say, are increasingly being orchestrated online, allowing inmates to keep up criminal behavior even as they serve time."

    Guards have long tried to keep illegal phones out of prisons, and are even forbidden from carrying cellphones themselves, yet " 'Almost everybody has a phone,' said Mike, 33, an inmate at Smith State Prison in Georgia who, like other prisoners interviewed for this article, asked that his full name not be used for fear of retaliation. 'Almost every phone is a smartphone. Almost everybody with a smartphone has a Facebook.' " Even Charles Manson managed to sneak in a flip phone while being heavily watched.  Despite increasingly clever methods to detect or block cellphones such as dogs that can sniff out rechargable batteries and screening calls and texts in or out- simply blocking all signals is illegal- thousands of phones are smuggled in through creative means such as footballs thrown over the fence or potato cannons in rural areas.

    This trend shows not only the difficulty of interdicting contraband, be it drugs, guns, or iPhones, on the demand side, but also how our network and information technologies contribute to non-state actor super-empowerment. Another example of criminal networks using otherwise widely available technology for leverage were the Mumbai attacks, where terrorists communicated, coordinated, and gathered intelligence with tools anybody can purchase at radio shack.

Alex Olesker

Comments

[Kids fitness]

The information reported in this report is not only interesting but extremely useful. Thank you for the effort just to us know all of this.