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Lawrence County Undersheriff Willie Wallace echoed Rushing's sentiments, saying that inmates in his county are also charged with possession of a cellular device in a correctional facility if they are caught with cellular phone pieces as well. Such a charge, Wallace said, carries a three- to five-year sentence.
State and federal officials, including U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, have voiced worries over cell phones being used to plan jailbreaks, as well as calling in favors and planning hits and other usually gang-related activities.
"When you have a limited staff like at night or weekends, they can pick up the cell phone and say come down here and break me out of jail," Wallace said. "You think it's not going to happen in Lincoln County or Lawrence County, but they can even operate a drug operation from a cell phone in jail."
Rushing said so far he hasn't found evidence of that in the Lincoln County Jail, but inmates do share their smuggled phones so they can all have contact with the outside world.
"We've found them sharing them in the cell block, we have come across them letting each other use them," he said. "But so far we haven't had any connection to outside criminal activities."
Meanwhile, it seems that not just in Lincoln and Lawrence counties, but everywhere, there are problems keeping the cell phones out of the jails because of their portability.
"Everyone is searched when they come in, but they're so easy to conceal," Rushing said. "We discuss it at the sheriffs' conferences all the time, how to consistently locate them and keep them out."
Wallace said people have gone to great extents to try to glue SIM cards inside elaborate greeting cards, because if they can get one cell phone inside the walls of the jail, inmates can just put in their own SIM cards and they have all their own contacts and information.
"I've got about five SIM cards laying on the desk in front of me that we've confiscated," Wallace said. "And I've got a sack full of cell phones.
Rushing said more often than not, the cell phones in his jail are being used to keep from having to use the pay phone.
"They're just trying to get contact with the outside," he said. "We have those regular phones out there that are pay phones. We've found them using cell phones more or less to get around that."
Wallace said the revenue that the county collects off jail pay phones was one thing that keyed sheriff's department employees in to watching for cellular devices.
"Ours fell from like $200 a month to like $75 a month, so what does that tell you?" he said. "There's cell phones in there."
The Safe Prisons Communications Act of 2009, which is being cosponsored by Wicker in the United States Senate, would allow states to petition the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use devices that would jam cell phone communications inside correctional facilities.
So far, Rushing said, jammers have been illegal. Rushing said Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps has been working for the cause as well.
Wallace said he and other officials at Lawrence County would be in favor of lifting the ban on cellular jammers in correctional facilities.
"Yes, I would support that," he said. "Of course it would mess me up as far as using my cell phone in the jail, but we've got other phones we could use."
Rushing said should the legislation pass, it would be a great help to corrections officers and law enforcement all over the country.
"It's an ongoing national problem. That's why they shouldn't have cell phones," he said. "It's just like any other criminal act. They're in jail, so their freedoms are obviously restricted."
