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Cell phone jammers ineffective in prisons

* Prison officials say inmates manage to have cell phones smuggled in
* Installation of mobile phone jammers in prisons illegal

By Aayan Ali

LAHORE: Mobile telephone jammers installed in the country’s most sensitive prisons have proved to be ineffective because of frequent technical failures.

Senior officials in the Prisons Department told Daily Times that the measure to install mobile phone jammers in prisons in order to prevent inmates from using their cell phones had failed because of technical faults.

Mobile telephones were prohibited inside jails, but inmates managed to have them smuggled in anyway, Interior Ministry officials said. “We admit that cell phones are smuggled into jails by various means, including with help from the jail staff,” they said. “But you can’t stop it completely. You can’t thoroughly search over 3,000 inmates every day with limited staff.”

Mobile phone jammers had failed in several jails across the country, sources said. Sindh Prisons Inspector General Brigadier Ayaz confirmed that a cell phone jammer had collapsed in one of the jails in the province, but they had decided to obtain better ones in future.

A major problem was that most cell phone jammers used in Pakistan were cheap Chinese or Taiwanese products, and hence not very effective, sources said. They were designed for use in banks, which only operated for a certain number of hours a day. Prisons needed jammers with the ability to operate round-the-clock, they said. “Also, these low-quality jammers give out within three months,” Prisons Department sources said, citing the instance of a jammer in a jail in Sindh which had stopped working within a few weeks of its installation.

Sources said that another flaw in jamming machines was that they could not block all mobile service providers at the same time. “If the Mobilink network is jammed in a prison, the coverage of other providers such as Telenor, Paktel and Ufone continues,” a senior Prisons Department official said. So an inmate with mobile phone connections of two different companies could never be prevented from using his mobile phone, he said. Similarly, he said that the SMS service continued to work if low-quality jammers were used to block cell phones.

Similarly, sources said, there were two links in each cellular phone network, uplink and downlink. “You cannot completely jam both at the same time,” sources quoted technicians as saying.

They said that a reliable, US-made cell-phone jammer cost around Rs 25 million and the authorities did not have sufficient funds for one. However, they said that the Sindh Prisons Department planned to buy one soon. Sources said that jail authorities in Lahore were also planning to set up mobile phone jammers and a proposal lay with the Home Department.

They said that the Deputy Inspector General Headquarters had issued a number of instructions to jail authorities regarding searching prisoners during confinement and after court attendance. However, mobile phones had still been discovered in the possession of “influential” prisoners during surprise searches, they said.

The sources said that the government had decided that the Jail Superintendent would be held responsible if any prisoner was found with a mobile phone.

Sources also told Daily Times that the installation of jammers in jails was illegal. “The law says that only banks are allowed to install cellular phone jammers, and the system was initially introduced only for banks,” they said. “Later, the Interior Ministry directed the four provinces’ Home and Prison departments to install cellular phone jammers in jails to curb their frequent use. However, there is no legal support for this initiative and cell phone companies can easily object to it on grounds that it hinders their operation outside the jails’ premises.” Sources said that jammers in prisons had created problems for cell phone companies, as they affected the quality of their service in the vicinity of prisons.

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