No one locked up is supposed to have a cell phone. No imprisoned drug lord is supposed to be able to use a land line to order executions on the outside.
But recent criminal cases and interviews with prison insiders show that a convict behind bars in Maryland still has extraordinary telephonic opportunity to commit more crimes while serving time.
"Cell phone use is very troubling," said Rod J. Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, and its discovery inside prisons "represents a complete security lapse."
On Monday, federal prosecutors in cooperation with the Baltimore state's attorney's office charged 28 alleged gang members, including a reputed city gang leader who commanded the Bloods gang by making calls from prison.
A murder-for-hire in Baltimore County in July was ordered by an inmate using a cell phone from state prison, according to a separate indictment earlier this month.
State prison system officials said yesterday that they could not say whether the number of cell phones smuggled into prison is on the rise or whether most are found during sweeps of cells or discovered on visitors or guards.
One former prison intelligence director estimated that about half the contraband cell phones - worth hundreds of dollars on the inside - are seized from inmates.
The number of inmates with cell phones is "very high," according to Frank Galaski, the recently retired director of intelligence for the state prison system in Maryland. Galaski said the phones are smuggled in by visitors, corrupt guards and outside workers entering the prison.
Adding to the problems, federal prosecutors say, gang members using phones have been known to put orders in code. In the case announced this week, one reputed gang leader at the Western Correctional Institute reportedly used Mafia-like language to try to restructure his drug turf in Baltimore.
State officials said yesterday that 395 cell phones were confiscated last year. Between January and August, the average was about 20 per month, said Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
More confiscations
But a crackdown last fall, which included more intensive searches of workers and correctional officers, led to a doubling of cell phone confiscations per month from September to December, Binetti said.
Last month, officials seized 80 cell phones in the state's 25 prison facilities.
"They're doing the best they can, but they're backed up into a corner," said Galaski, who founded the system's intelligence unit and retired last fall.
Inmates know there's a chance they'll get caught, so they take out the computer chip, essentially stripping the call record from the mobile phone, Galaski said.
To use prison landline phones, an inmate must first type in his personal identification number. But gang leaders, Galaski said, often use the PIN of another inmate, effectively shielding their calls on recorded lines from the ears of prison intelligence officers.
The going rate for cell phones smuggled into prison is $350 to $400 apiece or $500 for two, according to a corrections department source knowledgeable about the smuggling of contraband into state prisons. Though some are homemade, real chargers go for $100 to $150.
Tighter security
State corrections officials have said repeatedly since 2005 that they were tightening front gate security and checking staff members more thoroughly to crack down on drugs, tobacco, cell phones and other prohibited items getting into the hands of prisoners.
Yet, contraband - including cell phones - continues to find its way into prisons.
In July 2005, The Sun detailed how 92 cell phones had been recovered in less than a year from two maximum-security prisons in Jessup, one of which was shut down last year.
A month later, officials discovered that two inmates moving from the House of Correction compound at Jessup to the North Branch Correctional Institution near Cumberland carried three cell phones and a battery charger hidden in body cavities.
National experts have said that was an alarming number of cell phones to be making it into what are supposed to be high-security facilities.
Galaski said technological fixes, which include devices to detect cell phones and jammers to prevent their use, can be a problem. Electronic sweeps can interrupt internal security systems, and the use of jamming devices can interfere with cell phone calls in nearby communities, he said.
Binetti, the Maryland prison system spokesman, said dealing with gang members and their access to the outside world "is a challenge for everybody."
The gang issue
Since September, he said, representatives from the U.S. attorney's office, area law enforcement agencies and prison system officials have been meeting to discuss ways to combat the problems that gang members pose in and outside of prisons.
"We realize there is a statewide gang issue," Binetti said. "We know there's a problem."
Public safety officials said the state's prisons house 2,267 "validated" gang members - inmates whose identity as gang members has been firmly established. That's nearly 10 percent of the 23,000 inmates behind bars in Maryland.
The gangs have become so sophisticated that they often have application forms and conduct background checks on prospective members, Galaski said.
"That way, if they don't like you, they know how to get to your family," he said.
Part of the problem, Galaski said, is the small number of intelligence officers tracking gang activities, which he estimated at about one per prison in the state. Recent efforts to build a gang database to be shared with prison officials as well as local and state police has been successful, he said.
"This is a problem that has been ongoing not just for Maryland but for corrections systems around the country," Binetti said. "It's an old problem."
Orders from inside
Baltimore drug lord Anthony Ayeni Jones, whose gang killed more than a dozen people and sold more than $30,000 in crack and heroin daily, used the phone and a prison code to send out orders from prison.
The drug lord was able to covertly order the murders of federal witnesses, for which he later received four life sentences without parole.
In the wake of Jones' conviction, the Justice Department's inspector general criticized telephonic security breaches at federal prisons across the country.
Felicia Ponce, a federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman, said in an e-mail yesterday that improvements have been made, including new technology and better staff training for telephone monitoring.
As for Jones, his new home - the nation's most secure prison, in Florence, Colo. - prevents him from communicating with anyone other than his lawyer.
matthew.dolan@baltsun.com greg.garland@baltsun.com