Manson, Charles - Caught again with cellphone i...

Charles Manson caught again with cellphone in prison

By Michael Winter, USA TODAY  Feb 03, 2011

For the second time in two years,Charles Manson has been caught with a cellphone smuggled to him inside the California prison where he's serving life sentences for the notorious slayings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in 1969.

Guards found the phone Jan. 6 at Corcoran State Prison, in central California, the state corrections department said. Prison officials did not reveal whom Manson phoned or texted. In March 2009, guards found another phone under his mattress. Officials revealed he had called or texted people in California, Florida, New Jersey, and British Columbia, Canada.

Manson faces a disciplinary hearing, but, as the Los Angeles Times noted in December, it's not a crime to have a cellphone in a California prison and federal regulators won't let wardens jam signals. Prison guards are the primary source of smuggled phones, according to a state report.

Lawmakers are considering legislation to ban inmate cellphones. But, as the L.A. Times writes today, screening guards on their way into prisons could cost the cash-strapped state millions more each year because of their union contract. How come?

While union officials' stated position is that they do not necessarily oppose searches, they point to a clause in their contract that requires corrections officers to be paid for "walk time" – the minutes it takes them to get from the parking lot to their posts behind prison walls.

Putting metal detectors along the route, with an airport-like regimen involving removal of steel-toed boots and equipment-laden belts, could double the walk time, adding several million dollars to officers' collective pay each year, according to a 2008 Senate analysis.

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