According to a recent Greenville News report, cell phones are a major headache for state prison officials. According to that report, cell phones smuggled into prison are used by inmates to conduct criminal activity such as making threats, extorting money, engaging in credit card or tax fraud, and making drug deals. Phones also undermine prison security if they are used to warn other inmates of prison searches or to keep watch for prison guards, according to that report.

Prison officials listed the ways cell phones are smuggled to inmates: on visitors, in gifts and even in body cavities. Some people also attempt to get cell phones to inmates by throwing the phones over prison walls.

State Corrections Department spokesman Josh Gelinas said in an e-mail that the prison system confiscates or intercepts hundreds of cell phones every month.

That's a serious and expensive problem. According to the newspaper report, prison officers must use metal detectors, search visitors and patrol fence perimeters to keep the phones out of the state's prisons.

But the problem could be easily solved if the Corrections Department were able to simply block inmates' ability to make wireless calls from inside the prisons. That can be done with technology that's readily available.

Unfortunately, Federal Communications Commission rules prohibit state and local agencies from using cell phone jamming equipment. The worry when the rules were created, officials told The News, was that jamming communications would disrupt other nearby communication systems. However, one company's equipment is localized enough that it only would affect communications within the walls of a prison.

That company, CellAntenna Corp., has petitioned the FCC to lift the ban. The South Carolina Department of Corrections hopes an upcoming demonstration of the equipment by CellAntenna will help persuade the FCC to make the change.

The FCC should make this change.

Certainly CellAntenna stands to benefit if the change is made, because the company sells the equipment that blocks the transmissions. In fact, CellAntenna also is fighting this battle on a homeland security front, saying state and local law enforcement should be allowed to use the equipment to combat explosive devices that would-be terrorists might activate with cell phones.

Regardless of CellAntenna's motivation, the state Corrections Department stands to benefit if this equipment is allowed. And state residents would be made safer, too, if criminal enterprises being run from prison can be shut down.

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