My penpal emailed me back in December. I have no idea how he managed to do this but presumably from a phone. I haven't heard from him since. A couple of questions:
1. Several threads have people commenting that prisoners with cell phones are a "red flag." Why? Because they're breaking a rule or something more sinister?
2. What could be potential consequences for getting caught with a phone? Would this have affected him writing to me? Would it add time to his sentence?
Of course a lot of this is based off assumptions. He could have had someone else email me for him and never have had a phone at all. And perhaps there are other reasons why I haven't heard from him. It's been an unusually long time and I'm beginning to get concerned.
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For point 2 - one of my old PPs got caught with a cellphone and got 4 weeks in the hole, so yes there’s every chance it would effect him writing to you if he’s been sent to seg.
Number one is that, violation of rules which could result in a loss of all privileges including the ability to communicate with the outside world. Number two is these people are criminals and cell phones aren’t generally used for writing letters to their elderly grandmother. Phones are used for all manner of things… my aunt was a prison guard here in Australia.
They can be used for everything from illegal gambling rings, to extortion and racketeering and they can be used to maintain gangland connections/operate a gang while in prison, organise hits, or any other manner of other nefarious things including the operation of drug syndicates.
Some prisons here in Australia have now resorted to phone jamming devices to render illegal phones useless while in prison. I’m sure it will become prominent in the United States if it continues like this.
Ironically states such as California are working through ways of opening up internet connections through trusted service providers such as jpay where prisoners can now own tablet devices they can connect to jpay terminals to send and receive mail, listen to music and operate a limited range of apps on.
OMG, this thread is so fitting to my current situation right now. As those of you who read my thread here have heard.
Cellphones are a major breach of security for all the reasons It varies as to what happens from one state to another, but in some the penalties are severe, as in getting decades worth of extra time, one inmate got 60 years ADDED to his sentence. That's the known consequence, they get sent to seg a certain amount of times and if it continues may get time added to their sentence, that I know of anyway.
It is a concern, I hope you hear from your PP soon. I too await a response from mine on this issue. After being disciplined 3 times for this, I'm sure mine is in seg and therefore the letters will be a bit sparse going forward until he's out, that's what I expect anyway.
*For all the reasons Frankie mentioned it's supposed to say... LOL