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.
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
59 responses to “If You Have An iPhone In Prison, It Has Probably Been In Someone’s Butt”
Wow. Classy journalism. I’m amazed that you think this is newsworthy. I can’t, in good conscience, continue to visit this site any longer.
I agree, this guy has written some horrible posts.
” injecting a bar of soap into his anus”I hope you mean “insert.” I hope.
I wonder if anyone in prison is reading this article right now.
I wonder if Siri still works when the iPhone is inside your ass. Talk about convenient!
Any iPads yet?
wondering when they find the first ipad in there…….
Giz had to do something with all the due diligence their editors did prior to their being let off the hook over the iPhone 4 theft scandal.
Gives new meaning to “tweeting”.
Yeah, they should just get one of the bt headsets with a Siri button, and only take it out to look up porn
the bt headset would be confiscated along with a nice cavity search.
Sounds fun
L O FUCKING L AT THE HEADLINE
The captivate is not that big. But a htc Titan or dell streak would suck
HOLY SHNIKES!!!!!! This article and everyone’s comments have my side hurting, I am laughing out loud and everyone around me thinks that I’m crazy, lol. You guys are the best and this is quite possibly some of the best journalism that I’ve read in a long time. This does give the term jailbreak your iPhone a definite new twist.
Apparently now in prison you can have someone toss your salad and jailbreak your iPhone.
Physical keyboard = ribbed for your pleasure???
Caption on second photo:
I might be wrong, but the location of the apostrophe implies that it is only one prisoner – with the apostrophe and s indicating ownership.
“Every one of these smartphones has been in a …”
Screen is cracked.
iPhone 4S.
A few weeks ago there were many posts about the Japanese word for buttocks being ‘shiri’ – as opposed to ‘Siri’.
I hope these people put the vibration mode in off before the insertion.
My mother-in-law has a caboose so wide that she can store an iPad in it.
puts a whole new meaning to crappy reception
Some people are so uptight. It’s a funny piece. And it’s not like you’re visiting some super prestigious news outlet…
Great headline by the way!
My God, what utter and complete hogwash. Let’s start with the “Inmates use them to communicate with the outside world and orchestrate nefarious activities like drug drop-offs.” I suppose some might, but most use it to stay in touch with their friends and families, just like most people. The phone system in prison is hellish to use. The phones are mostly broken and provide barely audible conversations. The price of a phone call is very, very expensive (calls are about $2/minute for an in-state call, so the standard 15 minute call — the maximum time one may speak — is about $30) and must be placed collect, which means calling a cell phone, the only phone for many of the prisoners’ friends and family, is difficult and sometimes impossible. Most prisoners work during the day, so there is high demand for the official system on nights and weekends. Being able to make a call with any degree of certainty is hard to arrange, so calling on special days, such as birthdays and holidays, is catch as catch can. Also, the phones are out in the day rooms where everyone can hear the conversation and it competes with the incredible noise in the room. Lastly, the maximum time length, as I mention, is 15 minutes and that is not much time when trying to work things out with a spouse, talk to a dying parent, or help a child missing a parent.
So, the alternative to the crappy, difficult to use, expensive, and very limited system provided by the prison is the smuggled cell phone.
The phones are almost entirely smuggled in by the guards themselves. If one looks at the convictions for smuggling things into inmates, the convictions are all guards or staff. The claim that this is all done by outside civilians is simply not supported by the evidence. Inmates are fully searched everytime they’ve been outside the wall, often with random body cavity searches, so that store in the women’s restroom thing is simply crazy.
I know all of this after a two-year stint at FPC Lompoc, a two-year stint at Avenal State Prison, and a nice state at San Quentin. I am sure that some inmate kingpin is setting up that 1,000 pound meth import job on his cell phone, but the other 1,000 inmates are just to hold a marriage together, keep a kid from the wrong path, and apologize to a parent.
Phones are mostly stored under the locker or a light fixture. In all my time in prision, I never knew of one item ever stored up someone’s ass.
The drug king pin will always have his phone. He can afford to pay off the warden, if need be, let alone the cell block captain and all the rest. Getting rid of prison cell phones is just going to make things worse for the families on the outside.
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were the batteries included or they put them separately.
Ha ha, why don’t usa government just put a radio signal blocking devIce in every prison? ’cause we have them in europe
That bathroom issue seems like a huge security problem. If you can tape a phone behind the toilet, you can tape anything behind the toilet.
Maybe I’m stating the obvious here, but isn’t that the point of prison? You lose privileges, such as regular and lengthy phone calls with family and friends. Sorry, but I’m not sympathetic to what was written above.
The official position of the prison is to encourage family contacts and ties. Some 90% of prisons will be released, 50% or so within the next two years. Prisoners with strong family ties do vastly better once released than prisoners who do not. The first six months after release is crucial and strong family ties are the first thing a newly-released prisoner can call upon to help in that important time. Thus, society’s interest is best served by those phone calls.
However, some idiot, typically running a prison, decides to make a misserable experience even worse by making something as simple as a phone call into an ordeal. Yes, it make prison worse, but it also means many prisoners lose contact with their families, get released, re-offend (which means some innocent member of society suffered), and goes back to prison (at about $60,000/year expense to us).
One doesn’t need to be sympathetic, but one can be practical or vengeful. Being practical saves money, lives, and suffering.
May I also point out that while you may not have much sympathy for the prisoner, the six-year old who doesn’t get a phone call his birthday from his dad; the wife who just saw got the amniocentesis results and needs to talk to her husband; and the mother dying of cancer who wants to hear the comforting sound of her son’s voice might deserve some sympathy. Prisoners don’t exist in isolation, but are part of the fabric of society.
Additionally, there are almost as many ex-felons in this country as gay men, as a percentage of the population. You likely know someone who is an ex-felon. Talk to him and let him tell you how important those phone calls are.
I don’t know of any Western European prison that uses signal blocking technology. Most prison officials want staff to be able to use their cell phones in case of emergency. Would you please be so kind as to name the prison that uses the blocking technology?