[onetimeonly]

I've been to jail in the UK. I served 4.5 months in B and C category prisons. Phones are so easy to get hold of, I don't think most people would believe it. During my time I emailed photos from inside the prison to friends outside using a smartphone. Approx. every other prisoner had a phone, and everyone had access. They were so popular that I was able to keep myself safe (i.e. useful) by offering a phone unlocking service. Top-up voucher codes were a currency, even more than tobacco.

The thing is, they weren't small phones. People didn't smuggle them in their colons - they used code systems to arrange for their friends to throw things over the fences in particular places. Mini-riots were organised to coincide with throwovers. Drugs get in the same way.

There were a whole lot of more inventive methods used too. Suffice it to say that the problem is not the size of phones. It's that if you deprive people of their freedom, they spend all their time thinking about how to get it back. They will eventually work out how to get a little piece. Tiny phones won't make the blindest bit of difference.

[edent]

I'm curious about two things.

Firstly, how do you charge a phone? I wouldn't have thought cells had plug points.

Secondly, is there any realistic way of stopping phones getting in? Building higher fences, and putting sensors on them, sounds like one way of stopping throwovers for example.

T

[onetimeonly]

Cells in UK jails are not barren concrete-and-metal things like in the movies. They have a sink, a desk, a kettle, a TV, a (usually padded) chair and a bed. You charge your phone by plugging it in :).

Another fact many people don't know is that you can buy things, legally, in prison. By things, I mean pretty much anything in the Argos catalogue. You get an allowance of £10/week which you can save up (you have to earn it or have it sent in - it's not free). Some people had playstation 2s. Lots of people had stereo systems.

Many of the phones came without chargers, but people were very good at reworking electronics. I saw one system where someone had rewired the inside of his casette player to have two contacts so he could slot in his phone battery and it would charge when he pressed play, in a nicely hidden compartment.

I think there's not really any way of preventing smuggling. Like all systems of oppression, prisons stimulate peoples desire for freedom. When you have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to think about a way to smuggle something in, and then you have 10k people in a prison, and people get transferred between prisons... eventually someone will come up with a way, and it will spread fast.

[JonnieCache]

If you want to know what life in a UK prison is actually like, read this ebook, HMP - A Survival Guide http://issuu.com/prisonism/docs/hmp_a_survival_guide

It's a down to earth practical guide aimed at someone who hasn't been to prison before. The ToC features such chapters as Sharing A Cell, Violence, Getting Stuff Done (Complaints and Applications and so on. Smoking teabags, making toast using the radiator, cooking noodles in the kettle, making rope out of sheets to pass things between cells, flash-distilling vodka using ice cubes and a live 240v mains cable, it's all in there.

I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever wondered what prison really involves, day to day, from a prisoners point of view. Or anyone really. It's a fascinating document, very much DIY, reads a bit like a txtfile from back in the day.

[hmottestad]

New UK startup:

We deliver your package by anonymous drone. Drop from any height with or without parachute at any hour of the day.

You mail us your package together and a form specifying when, where and how your package should be delivered. Use the calulator on our webpages to calculate the price of the delivery. Cash or check is accepted. Any change can be delivered with your package.

Specify drop height, parachute, time and coordinates. We will deliver within 30-60-120 minute windows at different prices.

[nicholassmith]

That's an interesting little fact, I'd have assumed (naively) it'd be closer to 1 in 10 for phone ownership in prison populations due to the risk in things coming over the walls.