‘Cell’ phones

By all accounts, the commerce conducted behind bars in the U.S. and around the world is lively and nearly impossible to control. Smuggled weapons have been a problem for centuries. Drugs make their way into every prison and jail everywhere with the help of new inmates, visitors and corrupt guards augmenting low salaries. But one of the newest challenges for prisons is the smuggled cell phone.

In the x-ray image above, a Salvadorean prisoner was caught smuggling a cell phone into a prison by wrapping it in plastic and inserting it in, um, his rectum.

Brazilian prisoners were caught using carrier pigeons to bring cell phones to them in jail.

In several jurisdictions - including Maryland and Oregon - police have trained dogs to sniff out cell phones.

Some of the media reports mention the danger of cell phones being used to orchestrate crime from the inside, but these cases are probably rare - if a prisoner is determined to run a crime ring from his cell, he'll be able to do it - whether he has an 8 gig iphone with all of the killer apps or not. It's more likely that inmates are calling their moms and brothers with the phones - for years prisoners, their families and legal aid organizations have protested the phone rates changed by companies with exclusive contracts to provide service to prisons.