penal system

Cellular signal blockers sought for prisons

Cell phone signals would be blocked within a radius of 50,000 square meters of the prison.

NORIEL gUTIÉRREZ/ LA PRENSA

invisible bars: The government is considering installing U.S.-based company CellAntenna’s cell phone blocking equipment (above) at La Joya prison to prevent inmates from calling out.1111584

Knowing that prisoners frequently abuse cell phone privileges to continue criminal activities on the outside, National Penitentiary System director Luis Gordon said he is looking into installing technology to block cell signals in and around the country’s prison complexes.

In the next two weeks, a delegation of engineers from CellAntenna, a company based in the United States with subsidiaries in England and Poland, will visit La Joya prison east of the capital to demonstrate how their system works.

CellAntenna president Howard Melamed said that the cost of the system was discussed on Monday during a meeting with officials from the National Penitentiary System. According to company representatives, installing such a system in a prison with approximately 1,000 inmates could run between $150,000 and $250,000.

This blocking system would only cut off cell signals within the jail, and would not affect neighborhoods nearby, assured Melamed. In fact, the signal would only be blocked within a radius of 50,000 square meters.

The company president indicated that Panamanian authorities said the need to block out cell signals was urgent, but that the government had not yet decided whether or not to purchase the system.

Gordon, however, said that because the technology was crucial to preventing crime, installation of the equipment could start in the most “sensitive areas” of the prison.

“We’re awaiting the first study and to know in what kind of time frame it can be installed and whether we have the approval of the central government,” he added.

Similar systems have been installed in prisons in Colombia and Guatemala. Eddy Morales Mazariegos, director of the Guatemalan Penitentiary System, said in an interview with Prensa Libre that the cell phone signal blockers that were installed there in 11 prisons last year are no longer used because of deterioration.

According to that newspaper, inmates in those prisons collaborated with guards to cause failures in the system so as to continue to make calls from within their cells.