Contraband items recently seized by Midlands officials. Investigators say they were intended to be smuggled inside prison walls.
Columbia, SC (WACH) - The South Carolina Department of Corrections houses roughly 23,000 male and female inmates across the state and many of them are getting things inside prison walls that are worth big money.For years, the department has struggled to keep contraband items like cell phones, weapons and tobacco out of the state's prisons. Like most agencies, the department is doing more with less during tough economic times. But, the inmates are getting rich. Those contraband items can fetch as much as $500 apiece, and inside money means power. Officials say inmates are getting more creative to get their hands on these items and they're getting plenty of help from the outside.
"It's always going to be a problem no matter how many people you've got," said Department of Corrections spokesman Clark Newsom. "You've got to be on the alert because the criminal society has a lot of time to look into these things."
Newsom says people on the outside are smuggling the items into prisons by stuffing the materials into footballs or duffel bags and throwing them over prison walls into areas they know inmates can get access to the items. Officials have tightened security at the entrances to state prisons by adding metal detectors, but it is not a cure-all.
The issue of cell phones in prisons has been a problem for years. When inmates have access to the phones on the inside officials say they can still run criminal operations on the outside.
"You don't want them to be communicating with anyone on the outside," said Newsom. "You don't want them making any kind of plans if they were trying to cause problems either within the prison itself, or trying to get outside."
in 2010, former corrections department chief Jon Ozmint, former Governor Mark Sanford and corrections officials from around the country pushed the federal government to allow authorities to jam cell phone signals around prisons to help combat the problem. Those efforts achieved no results.
People caught smuggling contraband items like cell phones into prisons can face a year behind bars and face a $10,000 fine. If you suspect someone is trying to smuggle contraband into a prison you can call 803-896-5214 or 877-349-2257 to report it.
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