A former corrections officer, who has spent the past 15 years urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to permit cellphone jamming in state prisons, is now hopeful as approval appears increasingly likely.
After Robert Johnson, a former guard at South Carolina’s notoriously violent Lee Correctional Institution, was targeted in a hit orchestrated by inmates using smuggled cellphones, he dedicated his life to changing the law to allow cellphone jamming technology in prisons. After enduring more than 30 surgeries from the injuries he sustained in the shooting, Johnson is now, for the first time, cautiously optimistic that the FCC will approve cellphone jammers, potentially preventing others from facing a similar fate.
“If this is what it took to get this law changed, then it was worth it,” Johnson told NBC News.
On Sept. 30, the FCC approved a plan to advance the use of cellphone jamming in state prisons. The decision opens the policy for public comment, with a final vote scheduled for a later date.
It’s great news for Johnson. As a corrections officer, Johnson’s job was to stop inmates from smuggling cellphones, drugs, and other contraband. That’s when he discovered that an inmate had orchestrated a targeted attack, leaving him shot six times in the chest and stomach. Though he hoped to return to work after recovery, his injuries were too severe to continue.
“My heart was messed up — my liver, my lungs, diaphragm, right leg, left leg,” Johnson, 72, recalled. “I had everything wrong, from the nerve damage and trauma of those bullets.”
Johnson sees a cellphone in the hands of gang members and inmates as a “weapon of mass destruction.” For decades, he has spoken at law enforcement events nationwide and testified three times before the Federal Communications Commission, advocating to change a 1934 federal law that currently bars anyone except the U.S. government from interfering with public airwaves.
The former correctional officer believes cellphone jamming technology could stop inmates from orchestrating crimes from behind bars. At a press conference earlier this month, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr explained that the law “prohibits the jamming of authorized communication.” Having heard Johnson’s story firsthand when he worked for the commission as an attorney in 2017, Carr said he is now pushing to ensure that contraband cellphone signals are no longer considered “authorized.”
“Once contraband cellphone use is not an authorized communication, then the federal law is no longer a prohibition to jamming it,” Carr said. “And it’s well within the FCC’s authority to give that reading to federal law.”
However, wireless industry groups continue to push back, warning that jamming technology could disrupt signals beyond prison walls and interfere with emergency communications between guards and paramedics. As an alternative, industry groups point to managed access systems, which let officials detect and remotely disable smuggled phones.
But former South Carolina state prisons director Bryan Stirling, a staunch supporter of cellphone jamming, says that when these systems were installed in six state prisons in 2018 after a riot at Lee Correctional Institution, inmates still found ways to use contraband phones. He argues that jammers are far more effective, instantly cutting off all cell communication.
“Basically, MAS is like a doorman at a bar, and jammers are like a door that is always locked,” Stirling said.
RELATED CONTENT: NYC Mayor Receives Jailhouse Baptism From Al Sharpton On Good Friday