Cellphones are being hidden and smuggled into jails through babies' diapers, ramen noodle soup packages, footballs, soda cans and even body cavities, according to the Associated Press.
They're becoming a growing problem in prisons across the country as they are used to make threats, plan escapes and for inmates to continue to make money from illegal activity even while behind bars, the AP reported.
"You can pick states all across the country and you'll see everything from hits being ordered on individuals to criminal enterprises being run from inside institutions with cell phones," Michael Crews, head of Florida's Department of Corrections, told the AP.
Last fall, two murderers serving life sentences escaped from Florida Panhandle prison by using cellphones to help plan the getaway, according to the AP.
The escaped prisoners cell phones were just one of 4,200 cell phones confiscated by prison officials last year, or 11 per day, the AP reported.
"The scary part is, if we found 4,200, we know that's not all of them," Crews told the AP.
Jamming cell phone signals is prohibited by federal law, and it costs more than $1 million each for authorized towers that control what cell phone calls can come in and out of prisons, according to the AP. Some prisons even have to police their own corrections officers who sometimes help inmates receive contraband.
In Texas, a death row inmate Richard Tabler made several calls with a cellphone to state Sen. John Whitmire, who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, the AP reported.
"He held his phone out, I guess outside his cell and there was a very distinct prison noise. He said, 'Did you hear that?' and I said, 'Yup. That's a prison,' " Whitmire said, according to the AP. "I said, 'How'd you get that phone?' He said, 'I paid $2,100 for it.' I said, 'How do you keep it charged?' He said, 'I have a charger.'"
The calls continued, and Whitmire had the phone investigated. The month before, Tabler used 2,800 minutes and was sharing the phone with other prisoners, Whitmire said. Tabler's mother, in Georgia, was paying the bill and collecting payments from the other prisoners' families, the AP reported.
Tabler asked Whitmire if he could help arrange a visit with his mother, and when she arrived in Texas she was arrested for her part in the prison cellphone scheme, according to the AP. Tabler wasn't happy about that and made another call to Whitmire. "He said he was going to have me killed," Whitmire said.
A prisoner in Georgia was accused this year of using two cellphones to impersonate a sheriff's lieutenant and scam elderly drivers who had received red light camera tickets, getting them each to pay about $500, the AP reported.
Those helping inmates smuggle phones into Florida prisons can be charged with a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, according to the AP. In Mississippi, the penalty can be 15 years for having a cellphone in prisons
