Recently, a bill passed the U.S. Senate that would make it a felony for an incarcerated person to possess a cell phone in a federal prison (rather than a misdemeanor). The bill passed after very little debate, and the House of Representatives will likely do the same. I get it; it feels good as a measure of revenge. Called the Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Stopping Prison Contraband Act, it was drafted to “honor the memory” of a correctional officer who was killed in 2013, allegedly after a group of prisoners plotted his murder via a contraband cell phone.
This bill, however, is folly. Its wording and adoption are based on fear – a prime motivator for much of our policies – rather than a broader analysis of why so many incarcerated people possess cell phones despite the punishment if we are caught.
Phones as tools of accountability
Actually, to be honest, I am motivated to write this in part by fear, a fear that I will have no other way to document or spread the word about the wrongdoing of a regime that is too often driven by careless bureaucrats and thugs who do not have my best interests in mind. In fact, the system seems designed to protect itself against accountability. Prisoners are not allowed to do what others on the outside do to make their voices heard: circulate a petition, go on hunger strike, or refuse to go to work or patronize a business (in our case, the prison commissary or chow hall). Do that in federal prison and the punishment can be severe. When people in a federal prison camp in Alabama recently decided to stay in their cells instead of go to chow hall in protest of staff’s lack of attention to their First Step Act rights, about 60 of them (considered the organizers) were shipped out – to high-security facilities.
The BOP says that we don’t need these kinds of disruptive actions, because we can file complaints via its “administrative remedy” process. Well, that’s a joke, because not only are we often retaliated against for using it, but it’s rare for prison staff to side with prisoners, no matter how worthy the evidence. Yet we are not allowed to go to court unless we exhaust this process first, thanks to the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Like the phone bill, that law was passed quickly. And like the phone bill, it has allowed the BOP a measure of anonymity and immunity.
That is, until smartphones started to be smuggled in (often by staff).
Using smartphones, for example, prisoners have been able to document and share videos of guards assaulting prisoners. (Such a video was recently sent from FCI Atlanta to More Than Our Crimes, which shared it with Congressional staff. In turn, that office alerted the prison administration to check the surveillance cameras at a certain time and in the specified unit.) TikTok has been especially useful to expose prisons’ inedible “food,” lack of rec time and trash piling up inside housing units.
Phones as connectors
And then there is the value of smartphones in allowing us to stay connected to our families and communities in the midst of days-long lockdowns.
I invite you to try a thought experiment (a term coined by Albert Einstein). Take a moment and travel back in time to the spring and summer of 2020, the height of the COVD pandemic. I am told that many people remember this as a horrible time due to the “lockdowns” that kept most people in their homes. Now imagine that you were locked inside a bathroom that is 7 feet wide by 9 feet long. Not only that, but a government bureaucrat has forced you to live in that cramped space with his choice of living companion – a person you may end up hating, or barely tolerating. Not only was that my reality during the pandemic, it has been my life for much of the last 15 years.
This is prison.
But for those who manage to obtain a smartphone, it’s more bearable. We can talk to family, despite the lack of access to phones and email. We can look up legal information, even though we aren’t allowed to go to the law library. We can even take online classes…And we can surreptitiously capture staff abuse.
All of these benefits were ignored in the discussion of the bill that elevated possession of a phone to a felony.
Is a ban the only method of control?
Now, I am not saying that these devices are never used for ill purposes. Clearly they can and are, just like all other inventions. For example, I remember seeing a pencil used by a purple-suited villain in a popular movie to kill and maim. Yet no bans on pencils ensued. As for phones, there are a variety of alternatives to a total ban: At least one facility in the United States has experimented with allowing limited use of cell phones (which they sell), with good results: “It adds another method of safety to our facility because it takes away the mischief of the inmates sitting back there 24 hours a day with nothing to do,” said Sheriff Taylor. “Fighting. Different things.. Confrontation with corrections officers.”
And the UK installs in-cell phones to allow calls to approved numbers. “More prisoners will get phones in their cells to help them maintain family ties and significantly boost their chances of rehabilitation,” the government announced in 2018. (By the way, this would also significantly reduce the fights that erupt over use of the small number of phones after long lockdowns. A lot of federal prisons today are handling that by reducing call times from 15 minutes to 10! But how does that help maintain family ties?)
Another possibility is equipping “legal” smartphones with monitoring software – programs that already exist and are being used by the federal Office of Probation to monitor individuals both pre-trial and post-incarceration during supervised release. These programs allow access to social media, streaming services and even web browsers – all while protecting against the commission of fraud and other crimes.
Our early leaders created what has become known as the Bill of Rights for a reason: All governments tend toward tyranny. The whole “tough-on-crime” mentality that gets votes, and causes punishment to extend beyond the sentence itself to the way we are forced to live, is an example.
As of the time of this writing, the smartphone bill has not passed the House; you still have time to call your representative and tell him/her that it is not a protection, but an attempt to use the illusion of greater “safety” to justify abuse.
“Verily I say unto you, what you do to the least of yourselves, you do unto me” – Jesus of Nazareth
