loading...

As we all know, prisoners can pretty much get anything they want while behind bars, including cell phones and Facebook Friends!

Smart as they are, inmates have found a way to tap into the pay phone technology and use smuggled mobile phones to run criminal enterprises, intimidate witnesses, organize attacks on guards, even posting photos to Facebook.

This is all getting ready to come to an end.... 

A convicted murderer who is locked up for killing an Oklahoma sheriff was caught posting pictures to his Facebook page from inside his prison cell. Inmate Justin Walker apparently used his blackberry to upload the photos.
Credit: CBS

Last year, California prison guards confiscated nearly 11,000 contraband phones, a sharp increase from 2007 when only 1,400 were found. Even Charles Manson, arguably the state's most notorious inmate, has twice been caught with contraband phones.

loading...

But now Global Tek, the private company that owns the pay phones in California's prisons will pay millions of dollars to install technology that prevents inmates from using illegal cell phones to make their calls instead.

Dana Simas, a spokeswoman from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says,
"There are pay phones available on the yards, but if you were to go to them now, there's no one using them.  They're empty and a couple of years ago there were lines hours long."

But now with Global Tek gaining a monopoly on the outgoing calls in California State prisons, family members of inmates are concerned that the price of collect calls will be through the roof.

What do you think about the State disabling cell phone use? And what will the innovative inmates think of as their next bootleg communication network?

More From 93.7 WBLK