Rhode Island prisons use cell phone-sniffing dog
The RI Department of Corrections has spent thousands of dollars to acquire and train special European police dogs that can scour prison cells, hallways and cafeterias for marijuana, cocaine, heroin and —- cell phones
The cell phone has become an indispensable tool of modern life. It lets you call from the grocery to see if it was skim or 1-percent milk you were suppose to buy, or let mom know you are staying after school.
One place where they do not want you to be able to reach out and touch someone is prison, where, for administrators, the relentless miniaturization of the cell phone has become an increasing concern.
California seized 4,000 illicit cell phones from its prisons in 2009. In the past five years, prisoners in Maryland and Tennessee used them to help organize murders and plan escapes. In Texas, a death-row inmate used a smuggled cell phone to make death threats against a state senator.
I the prison-management nightmare scenario, in 2001 prisoners in multiple prisons in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo used cell phones to coordinate simultaneous uprisings while confederates outside carried out attacks on local police stations.
Providence Journal’s John Hill writes that the problem has not risen to those levels in Rhode Island, where about a half-dozen of the devices have been found on prisoners in the past two years or so. Besides instituting search protocols and policies, the Department of Corrections has spent thousands of dollars to acquire and train special European police dogs that can scour prison cells, hallways and cafeterias for marijuana, cocaine, heroin and … cell phones.
Robbie, a Belgian Malinois owned by the corrections department, is the department’s designated cell phone dog. He initially was brought in to sniff out drugs, but with extra training was taught to find cell phones as well.
Prisons across the country are using dogs to find illicit electronics. Stephen J. Hauser, the corrections officer Robbie works with, said no one knows exactly what it is in a cell phone that dogs such as Robbie can smell that leads them to phones, but it works. Robbie’s best catch so far was an iPod hidden underneath a sink in one of the women’s facilities, correction spokeswoman Tracey Zeckhausen said.
In this past legislative session, the Department of Corrections lobbied for a new law that would have made possession of a cell phone by an Adult Correctional Institutions inmate a crime punishable by a maximum of five years more in prison. The bill did not pass, and administrative anxiety has not gone away.
Director of Corrections A.T. Wall called the bill “vital to the safety and security” of
