Taking the phones out of cells: Are signal jammers the answer?

On Wednesday, 28s gang boss George ‘Geweld’ Thomas was sentenced in Cape Town to seven life terms for murder. Several of his crimes were planned and orchestrated while under lock and key. During Thomas’ trial, it emerged that he made over 33 000 cellphone calls while he was an awaiting trial prisoner at five different correctional facilities in the Western Cape.

Thomas, it was reported, made more than 1,300 cellphone calls per month to underlings in his gang. Though behind bars, his access to a cellphone effectively enabled him to continue running his gang on the outside – and to plot the intimidation and execution of state witnesses.

“The thousands of phone calls that have been made from within prisons raise serious concerns about prisoners’ access to and impact on the communities outside of jail,” Western Cape Community Safety CEO Dan Plato said last month, commenting on Thomas’ trial.

Thomas isn’t an isolated example. There have been numerous reports over the last few years of high-profile South African prisoners being caught with cellphones, even if their access might not have resulted in as deathly consequences as in Thomas’ case. In a raid on Durban’s Westville Prison last Friday, almost 70 phones were seized, with one inmate alone found to be in possession of 128 sim cards.

When the Democratic Alliance raised the issue in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) a few months ago, Justice and Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha said that the idea of using signal jamming devices in prisons was being explored.

Such devices would see to it that even if prisoners managed to obtain cellphones, they wouldn’t be able to make or receive texts or calls. The DA has declared itself strongly in favour of this solution. The DA’s shadow Correctional Services minister James Selfe was quoted this week as saying that it “can and must be done”, and that one of the collateral effects – that prison warders would also have no access to cellphone signal – was immaterial.

Signal jamming in prisons might seem like a reasonable response to an apparently pervasive and longstanding problem, but is it the best way to proceed?

Clare Ballard, an attorney who works on the penal reform programme for Lawyers for Human Rights, thinks not.

“Cellphones are considered contraband in correctional facilities,” Ballard told the Daily Maverick. “So in my mind, signal jammers – extremely expensive devices – are a very roundabout way of dealing with the problem of smuggling: a problem often facilitated by correctional officials themselves.”

The more cost-effective way of dealing with the problem of cellphones in prisons, she suggests, is for Correctional Services “to simply police their own systems more effectively”.

Correctional Services spokesperson Logan Maistry told the Daily Maverick on Wednesday that the department is rolling out “cellphone detection systems” in a number of major correctional facilities. “Further security improvements include the installation of body scanning equipment,” Maistry said.

Ballard questions the value of this, however, if corruption within institutions is the reason many inmates end up with cellphones.

Wits Justice Project’s Nooshin Erfani-Ghadimi also expresses concern about the violence sometimes inflicted on prisoners during cellphone searches.

“I’ve been saying for a long time that a lot of torture stories we hear seem to start with ‘They were looking for a cellphone in my cell’,” Erfani-Dhadimi told the Daily Maverick.

There’s also the suggestion that the use of signal jammers might infringe on prisoners’ rights in other ways.

“Internet is permitted – often following court intervention – in some facilities for study purposes,” Ballard points out. “A blanket blocking of signal would block signal for education purposes.”

Then there’s the fact that the payphones with which inmates are supposed to be able to communicate with the outside world often aren’t available.

“I receive countless complaints from inmates explaining that the available payphones at correctional centres are permanently out of order,” Ballard says. “Given that inmates have the right to communicate with legal representatives and family and family, it is certainly no surprise that cellphones are smuggled in simply out of frustration.”

Erfani-Ghadimi agrees.

“This isn’t Orange is the New Black,” she says. “There’s one warden looking after over 100 inmates.” Access to functioning payphones is a big problem.

“If you look at the individual’s right to be able to contact their family and lawyer, to have so few working payphones is actually impossible,” says Erfani-Ghadimi. “This is their only way out; [cellphones might be] their only way to get medical help in an emergency; their lifeline.”

One of the additional complicating factors from an implementation perspective is that Correctional Services would have to reach an agreement with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) before signal jammers could be rolled out. In the past, Icasa has said that the use of jammers by Correctional Services would be illegal because the department has “alternative legislation” to enforce security.

Icasa spokesperson Paseka Maleka told the Daily Maverick on Wednesday that CEO Pakamile Pongwana was unavailable for comment on the matter. Correctional Services spokesperson Maistry said that the department was “still engaging various role-players in the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster as well as Icasa”.

Erfani-Ghadimi says that the issue throws up some interesting questions about prisoners’ rights.

“Especially now with online courses, what is the right of an inmate to data and airtime?” she asks. “Let’s talk about it.” DM

Read more:

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  Alleged 28s gang boss found guilty of seven murders, on EWN

  
  

Photo: George 'Geweld' Thomas talks to an unidentified man prior to sentencing procedures at the High Court in Cape Town, South Africa 19 May 2015. EPA/NIC BOTHMA