Drone Contraband Deliveries Are Rampant at US Prisons

The heists are not committed by children. People are running jobs on both sides of the building. Internet-connected cell phones and electronic money transfers through Green Dot, or mobile payment services like Cash App, make it easier to coordinate.

For the longest time prisoners looked inward. It became very profitable for people to smuggle it from the outside and for prisoners to distribute it inside.

David Simon, a major at the Lee County Sheriff's Office of South Carolina, said that if the yard is dry, a pound of tobacco product can go for up to $4,000. There is a shadow market for drones.

According to Jeffrey Wilkins, the president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, drones are seen daily in the 49 institutions they represent. More or less tollbooths are more or less medium security facilities. The technology is so advanced that they can even use it to their advantage. They reach out of their cell windows to grab it.

Drugs and weapons are sparking violence between inmates and officers. Wilkins told me that a national monitoring center gets a call twice a week from a prison where an injured officer can't finish a shift.

The weapons we are seeing are things that we have never seen before. The amount of drugs seized is staggering.

According to data from the Correctional Service of Canada, out of approximately 12,000 inmates in medium and maximum security institutions, assault incidents rose from April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, and jumped a staggering 185 percent in structured intervention units that house inmates more secluded from the general. There was a rise in the number of cell phones, calling cards, cell phone chargers, and sim cards that were seized.

The Southern District of Georgia sentenced Lo and Toure to twelve months in prison over the advisory guidelines of their plea agreements due to the growing severity of the problem.

If I try to get nine or ten cell phones inside the prison, I might have to go down to the penitentiary for three years. It seems like my option is going to be federal prison if I try to do that again.