Sc Prison Inmates

Facebook deletes prisoner pages, where inmates conduct criminal activity

Facebook officials announced intentions this week to work with police to keep prisoners off the social networking site.

The California Department of Corrections approached the social media giant after fielding hundreds of complaints from victims who were contacted by prison inmates, according to the International Business Times . Inmates, who are not allowed Internet access, have been using Facebook to deliver threats, make sexual advances and orchestrate crimes.

"Access to social media allows inmates to circumvent our monitoring process and continue to engage in criminal activity," CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate said in a statement. "This new cooperation between law enforcement and Facebook will help protect the community and potentially avoid future victims."

Prisons across the country have been experiencing similar trouble since smartphones hit the market, the New York Times reported . With the Internet access smartphones provide, it's easy for inmates to call up phone directories, maps and photographs for criminal purposes.

In California, a convicted child molester used Facebook to look at photos of his now-17-year-old victim, drew pictures of her and mailed them to her house, according to CBS News . The inmate had not seen the victim for 10 years but accurately drew the girl's current hairstyle and clothing. In Oklahoma, a convicted killer used the website to post photos of drugs, knives and alcohol he'd smuggled into his cell. In Maryland, imprisoned gang members used smartphones to approve targets for robberies.

"The smartphone is the most lethal weapon you can get inside a prison," Terry L. Bittner, director of security products with ITT Corp., which makes cellphone-detection systems for prisons, told the New York Times . "The smartphone is the equivalent of the old Swiss Army knife. You can do a lot of other things with it."

Cellphones are considered contraband in prison. Most of the time, prisoners buy them from guards or have visitors smuggle them in. Behind bars, a cellphone can go for $1,000. In South Carolina, though, smugglers have been caught tossing phones over fences.

In California last year, prison officials confiscated 10,760 cell phones, the San Francisco Chronicle reported . In 2006, they confiscated only 261.

"Almost everybody has a phone," a 33-year-old inmate at Smith State Prison in Georgia told the New York Times. "Almost every phone is a smartphone. Almost everybody with a smartphone has a Facebook (page).

ACLU Sues South Carolina So Prison Inmates Can Have ...

(NYDN) – The American Civil Liberties Union wants prisoners at a South Carolina jail to have access to pornography, lawyers defending a religious freedom lawsuit claim.

A suit was initially filed against the Berkeley County Jail in Moncks Corner last month for allegedly barring inmates from receiving any reading materials besides the Bible from outside the prison, which lawyers representing the prison deny.

The attorneys said prison inmates are simply not allowed to read materials bound together by tape, staples, paper clips or clasps. They also aren’t allowed material that could “encourage deviant sexual behavior.”

“If they don’t like the wording in some of our policy, we’ll be happy to try and create better wording. But, there are certain issues that we’re just not going to be able to bend on,” Sandra J. Senn, co-counsel for the jail told a local ABC News affiliate.

“It’s going to create all kinds of problems because you’re going to have an issue with masturbation at that point,” added Robin L. Jackson, the other co-counsel on relaxing the rules. “Then, you run the risk of not just sexual assault, but physical assault because men don’t want to see other men doing those types of activities.”

Thankfully, those poor brain-washed sidewalk collectors for the ACLU leave me alone now. (In DC there always seem to be these “teams” of sidewalk fundraisers bothering people as they try to get lunch or run errands during the day. Stand right in the middle of the none-too-wide sidewalks.) Cite stuff like this to them, they shut right up.

Hey– you’re in JAIL. You shouldn’t get all the comforts of home, and DEFINITELY including shite like that. What happened to the concept of punishment? (Oh, right. our wonderful AG Holder thinks the only reason “his” people are in jail is ’cause we’re all such racists, sorry, forgot that)

You’d think prison is a day camp. They can’t go outside, but they can have all the comforts of home .. like this is supposed to the ‘right’ thing to do?

Kick their asses so when and if they get out, they’ll think twice about getting back in. It ain’t supposed to be a summer camp where they just ‘do their time’. It’s supposed to be a deterrent to perverse behavior.

The ACLU has way outlived its usefulness.

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