Listen to me sing, “I’ve seen the world spinning on fire, I’ve danced and sang in the devil’s choir.”
The smuggling of cell phones to convicts is not just a problem in California. It’s a big problem in Texas, in the other states and in federal prisons as well. And it’s a problem that can have serious consequences.
With a high-profile inmate like Charles Manson, I would like to believe that his visitors are thoroughly searched when they enter the prison and that Charlie will be strip searched immediately after the visit is concluded, including the ‘bend over and spread your cheeks’ part. This case leads me to believe that Charlie got his phone from a low-profile inmate who had a visitor smuggle it to him or from a crooked correctional officer.
In 1989, Manson was transferred from San Quentin to California State Prison, Corcoran where he is confined in the prison’s high security Protective Housing Unit.
LG FLIP PHONE FOUND IN MANSON’S PRISON BED
By Jack Dolan
Los Angeles Times
December 2, 2010
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Contraband cell phones are becoming so prevalent in California prisons that guards can't keep them out of the hands of the most notorious and violent inmates: Even Charles Manson, orchestrator of one of the most notorious killing rampages in U.S. history, was caught with an LG flip phone under his prison mattress.
Manson made calls and sent text messages to people in California, New Jersey, Florida and British Columbia before officers discovered the phone, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections.
Asked whether Manson had used the device to direct anyone to commit a crime or to leave a threatening message, Thornton said, "I don't know, but it's troubling that he had a cell phone since he's a person who got other people to murder on his behalf."
Although officials say inmates use smuggled cell phones for all manner of criminal activity, including running drug rings from behind bars, intimidating witnesses and planning escapes, it is not a crime to possess one in a California prison.
In August, President Barack Obama signed a bill banning cell phones from federal prisons and making it a crime, punishable by up to a year in jail, to smuggle one in. That law does not apply to state institutions.
The proliferation of cell phones in California prisons has been exponential in recent years, authorities say. Guards found 1,400 in 2007, when the department began to keep records of confiscations. The number jumped to 6,995 in 2009 and stands at 8,675 so far this year.
The phones show up in minimum security work camps as well as in the most heavily guarded administrative segregation units — whose residents include gang leaders confined to their cells around the clock except for brief stints when they're allowed to pace around metal cages in the prison yards.
Prisoners and supplies coming into those units are searched, but inmates sometimes hide devices in their body cavities, officials said.
There have also been state-documented cases of guards bringing phones into prisons. An inspector general's report last year noted that the phones fetch up to $1,000 each and highlighted the case of a corrections officer who made $150,000 in a single year by supplying the devices to inmates. He was fired, the report said. Criminal charges were not an option.
Prison officials would not release the identities of any of the people Manson contacted. But the entertainment news show Inside Edition broadcast recordings of a voice, identified as Manson's, on March 23, 2009. Four days later, guards found a phone during a search of Manson's cell.
One of the clips features Manson's raspy, high-pitched voice singing, "I've seen the world spinning on fire, I've danced and sang in the devil's choir."
Manson, 76, who is technically eligible for parole but will almost certainly die in prison for ordering the ritualistic murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others in 1969, had 30 days added to his sentence after his phone was discovered. He was also counseled and reprimanded.
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