Most of us are hopefully unfamiliar with the prison scene, so Gizmodo has taken an interesting look at technology in California’s San Quentin State Prison. The series is called “Lockdown,” and the latest installment focuses on how smartphones are used behind bars.
Phones in prison are a hot item, going for $300 to $700 behind bars. Inmates use them to communicate with the outside world and orchestrate nefarious activities like drug drop-offs. Prisoners will do basically anything to keep an iPhone from being confiscated. And we do mean anything.
iPhones and the like are so prized in prison that inmates will not hesitate to stuff smartphones up their anal cavities. In fact, smartphones are in constant circulation among prisoners to stay under the radar, so an iPhone will probably be stored in a few butts before it even gets used for its intended purpose. An inmate will prepare himself by inserting a bar of soap into his anus before he goes to sleep.
The iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen would be bad enough to have up one’s derriere, but can you imagine what a Blackberry Storm would feel like? Or how about the mother of large smartphones: the 4.78-inch Samsung Captivate? Anything with a physical keyboard would probably be particularly painful.
While many of the smartphones in circulation among inmates is still of the cheap, pre-paid variety, the sergeants Gizmodo talked to did note that smartphones are becoming increasingly popular due to their 3G data connection.
Drops can work in a number of ways. For example, there’s a bathroom just outside one of the main San Quentin gates which is open to the public and is a big draw for tourists. Inmate work crews clean these bathrooms every day. An inmate’s associate on the outside will have taped a package (of phones, drugs, tobacco, etc.) to the back of the women’s toilet, for example. When the inmates come to clean, they toss it in with the rest of the trash, then sort through it later. Then, when when nobody’s looking, whoop, up the butt it goes. They are usually prepackaged in latex gloves or condoms for easier insertion.
Makes you think twice before breaking the law.
