Sheriff: Cell phones national prison problem

With continued revelations of possible cell phone use by inmates at the St. Mary Parish Law Enforcement Center in Centerville, Sheriff Mark Hebert said he is personally touring the facility to ensure measures are being implemented to address security concerns.
Hebert said sheriff investigators are trying to determine if more than 100 posts to an inmate’s Facebook account from July 16 to July 21 were made by inmate Alvin Terrell Louis, 32, or possibly by someone on the outside who had access to his account.
Five inmates at the jail were charged on July 7 with bringing contraband into the jail in connection with a case where inmates uploaded videos and photos to social media websites.
It is against prison policy and state law for an inmate to possess a cellphone or to personally participate in social media exchanges while they are in jail. Possession of contraband in a prison could bring up to a five-year sentence upon conviction. Less severe is a three-year-old state law for participating in social media while incarcerated, which could net a 30-day jail term.
Inmates appearing in the earlier videos and pictures appeared to have a baggie of marijuana, a makeshift shank, mop handles fashioned into weapons, sheets hung as curtains around cell bunks and inmates using telephones.
“You have to be able to see with your eyes these inmates,” Hebert said of the problem with having sheets concealing the bunk. “That issue was addressed right away and I have made personal passes through the facility myself.”
As a former jail warden, Hebert said he is aware of how important it is to try to correct any security weaknesses that inmates may discover and attempt to exploit.
Some inmates “are sitting all day long” scheming ways to cause trouble or devising plans of escape, Hebert said.
He said new staff members are given training to make them aware of security measures and the jailers use “self-checking mechanisms” to make sure procedures of security are followed.
Prisoners have many opportunities to test the strength of the jail’s screening of contraband, the sheriff said.
“We try to watch everyone that comes to the facility including church groups, GED and work classes,” Hebert said. “We screen those on work release and we make an accounting of where tools are and where mops are. We listen to the rumors and check them all out. This is part of what we do every day.”
Hebert acknowledged that in the past, jail staff was involved in inmates’ access to contraband and those staff members were subsequently charged, he said.
“We are going to pursue charges to the fullest extent possible on anyone involved in this kind of activity,” Hebert said.
Inmate use of cell phones is especially frustrating because the technology exists to block their use inside of the jail, Hebert said.
“This is a national problem and it is not going away,” Hebert said. “We need to rattle the cages of the federal people because there is a simple solution and we are not able to use it.”
Hebert is referring to inexpensive signal jammers that would render cell phones inside the facility useless. Those jammers would be set in such a way as not to affect communication beyond a certain range, thus not interfering with public cell phones, he said.
The Federal Communications Commission enforces its ban on the application of such technology because it said the jamming interferes with emergency communications and other cell phones.
Hebert said the regulations are decades old and were put in place when cell phones were in their infancy. Jail staff has no need to use a cell phone and should communicate via radio signals, which would not be affected by the jamming.
Hebert still refused to discuss how two prisoners managed to escape through the ceiling on the evening of Feb. 2, Super Bowl Sunday. He said the repairs were done after the escape and “I am not worried about that being a weak area in the future.”
A public records request to the St. Mary Parish Government yielded nine pages of documents, including an April 23 public notice stating the work was substantially completed by Acadiane’ Renovations, Ltd.
The details justifying the $33,420 in work were blacked from the public notice.
Eight of the nine pages had information blacked out, including the Feb. 6 proposal from the company, the Feb. 8 agreement between the company and parish with several paragraphs of specifications.
Henry “Bo” LaGrange, chief administrative officer for the parish, said the redactions were done “for security reasons.”