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Charlie Manson (and lots of other California prisoners) getting access to cell phones

By Douglas A. Berman

I am having a hard time avoiding giving some humorous spin to the news that mass murderer Charlie Manson and many others in California's prisons apparently have little problem getting access to cell phones.  This lengthy Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Lawmakers say guards union is a key obstacle in effort to keeping cellphones out of prisons," provides some interesting backstory: Lawmakers struggling to keep cellphones away from California's most dangerous inmates say a main obstacle is the politically powerful prison guards union, whose members would have to be paid millions of dollars extra to be searched on their way into work. Prison employees, roughly half of whom are unionized guards, are the main source of smuggled phones that inmates use to run drugs and other crimes, according to legislative analysts who examined the problem last year...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 03, 2011 (boomark / email).