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Crime Technology

2 Arrested In Plot To Fly Contraband Into Prison With Drone 118

Posted by samzenpus from the care-package dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Using a drone to get contraband into prison seems to be all the rage lately. Police say two men attempting to fly drugs, tobacco and pornography into a Maryland state prison with a drone were arrested Monday. Stephen T. Moyer, secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services worries that someone will try to use a drone to deliver a gun. "That's my biggest fear," he told a news conference. "The use of these drones to bring this type of contraband into a facility is very, very troubling, and we're going to address it."
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2 Arrested In Plot To Fly Contraband Into Prison With Drone More

2 Arrested In Plot To Fly Contraband Into Prison With Drone

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  • More NCIS plot ripoffs.

    • Yep. Why would anybody use something so noisy and easy to spot as a drone? It makes no sense.

      Hint: Use a big catapult/slingshot to fire stuff over the wall.

  • So that's why I didn't get my drugs, tobacco and pornography this month.

  • Not hard.

    No yard. They see the outside through glass or not at all until their term ends.

    The threat with the drones is that someone drops something in a fenced off area that prisoners are allowed to walk around in...

    Okay... so... don't have those areas.

    Another problem solved by answering simple questions with obvious answers.

    Accept me as Pope of the solar system and behold my many following decrees!

    • Re:Nothing open to the sky (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @05:35PM (#50384117) Homepage

      ...until the lack of fresh air and sunlight is deemed cruel and unusual punishment, and the unnatural environment is found to be detrimental to rehabilitation.

      The obvious answers to simple questions have usually already been considered, and have already been rejected for reasons obvious to others.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Thud457 ( 234763 )
        10,000 years of VR rehabilitation until they're ready to become productive members of society. And brain implants.

      • Incorrect. Many prisons are entirely enclosed and are not deemed cruel.

        The reason to not impliment it is cost. Many existing prisons have yards and replacing the with large recreation buildings would be expensive. Thus the drone thing will be tolerated at such facilitates.

        As to whether obvious answers are considered and rejected... the funny thing is that you're right... but then the other options all fail one after the other until all they have left is the first option. And if the mission is critical... th

        • Many prisons are entirely enclosed and are not deemed cruel.

          Because prisoners still get outside time.

          Then the Drones will deliver to where they are outside, instead of the yard.

          All you are doing is shifting the problem, not addressing it. Maybe making it ever so slightly more difficult, to a negligible amount that doesn't do the idea justice.

          Really, they should just shut down the use of anything electronic within the bounds of the yard. That is much simpler, and far more effective since it also stops a lot of other problems, like cell phone use.

          • Are you suggesting they buy magical anti-electronic beams?

          • There are some prisons that are literally skyscrappers... there is no outside time.

            And even if there always were... and there isn't... you could limit the size of that area and remove any grass... so it was a small uniform flat area... and then a guard could inspect it every morning reliably.

            As to shutting down anything in the yard that is electrical... how? With magic?

            The only thing that makes any sense to me that would work besides enclosing their rec time would be putting out some motion sensing cameras

            • There are some prisons that are literally skyscrappers... there is no outside time.

              I very much doubt this, and could not find anything supporting that claim.

              Can you provide a source of some sort? It should be easy to verify.

              • https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

                There are quite a few such facilities throughout the country. I know one in Los Angeles and there are a couple in Florida that I know of as well.

                They're not uncommon.

                This notion that it is inhumane if you don't get yard time is odd. It is generally considered inhumane if they don't get recreation time but there is no provision that they need to see the sun at any point.

                Yard are provided mostly because it is sufficient and inexpensive. However, there is nothing that says we h

                • Humans tend to suffer from poor health when prevented from having access to natural light.

                  • No. You just need to have vitamin D in the food.

                    Just giving the prisoners dairy products fortified with vitamin D will probably be all you need to do.

                    What is more, I'm not saying no light... I'm saying nothing open to the sky. You can have sky lights or even build your rec center like a giant green house. Fucking fill the thing with plants if that makes you happy.

                    Ultimately, the prisons will probably have anti drone defenses installed. Basically stationary drones that have motion tracking and if they see so

                    • No. You're wrong. Vitamin D is not a substitute for natural light.

                      There are numerous studies on this. Look it up instead of just assuming your idea has merit.

                    • Can you cite something for me? Because I'm pretty sure it is all vitamin D.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mysidia ( 191772 )

            Then the Drones will deliver to where they are outside, instead of the yard.

            The top of the line consumer drones can only fly for about 10 minutes tops.

            So work out the maximum expected travel distance of the drones at full speed that bad guys are likely to have at their disposal, then mark out that radius, add 20% and make that entire area an "Official Drones Only" zone.

            Build future prisons with at least twice that radius of buffer zone around them that nobody is allowed to enter.

            Any drones found f

          • Why do people think these things are some kind of 'stealth' devices that can just sneak in and drop off the goods? These type drones are loud as hell and, unless the prison is staffed completely with the deaf, any guard is going to hear the thing coming.
        • Mesh netting over the yard?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        If rehabilitation were the main goal of imprisonment, then there would be no practical reason to keep people in prison after they are rehabilitated, and knowing that they'll be set free as soon as they are reformed would be a powerful motivator for prisoners to avoid breaking the rules by, for example, accepting contraband by drone.

        Amazing things could happen if we were to align the goals of prisoners with the goals of the rest of society.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Alioth ( 221270 )

        Chicken wire over the yard.

    • The other obvious answer has been tested in Kentucky. Prison yards already have guards... with shotguns... on towers... watching for anything suspicious... you see where I'm going with this?

      • and if I drop a package full of drugs on the lawn that is literally covered in Sod that was stapled to it so the bag appears to be made of grass and so blends into the lawn... if I do this at 2 AM...

        What then? The prisoner then walks over to where ever it is... extracts the drugs or takes whole package or whatever...

        Your concept is to have a guard shoot the drone out of the sky.

        That works if the drone is active in when the prisoners are there. Wrong. You drop the package off when no one is looking.

        Think lik

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Okay... so... don't have those areas.

      Sure.... but why not just build a fenced in area that drones cannot enter?

      Low tech method would be to cover the yard with netting.

      High tech method would be to have their own tethered drones or sensing devices conducting a continuous aerial patrol.

      If a drone flies over, do an immediate lockdown and scramble guards to secure all the prisoners and take the drone down.

      • netting is fine. The issue I have with that is that if there are gaps in the net large enough that I could drop something through the net... then why not fly over the yard and drop something through the net?

        Imagine a lawn dart full of heroin... or perhaps lots of little golf ball sized bags of drugs that just go right through the netting?

        So your netting would have to be really fine. Maybe if you used that netting they use in agriculture to shield some plants from the sun. I think they use it over peppercorn

        • Depends on what your concerns as a prison warden are. Small bags of drugs that fit through 1cm2 bird netting are possibly fine from their perspective. Knives, guns, or other armaments not so much. Same with larger bags of drugs that are intended for distribution. These sorts of things cause problems.

          The issue is also not new. Most prisons have a double fence setup so that people can't launch contraband over the fence into a prisoner accessed space already. This has seen people build crossbows and cata

          • how about 1 cm packets of C4 that can be mashed together along with a small detonator that slips through inspections in parts?

            You're not letting your inner demon out to really see what worst case scenarios look like.

            Maybe its just me, but I don't want to shiv a guy if my intention is to kill him. Shiving a guy is dangerous. And getting away with it means some sort of conspiracy. And I'm not going to trust any of these fucking people with a secret like that especially if they can get time off their sentence

            • There will always be vectors that you cannot prevent and any system can be circumvented. It's not so much a case of worst case scenarios that you need to be concerned about though, because the more out there they get the more difficult they are to achieve. You might be able to drop marble size pieces of C4 through, but you add a significantly higher barrier to entry around someone being able to obtain those types of things, make sure the customer gets all of them without being caught, and do it in a way t

              • my point is that a net won't stop me from dropping explosives into the prison and frankly I think those are a bigger problem. A knife... who cares. They already have shivs. A gun? What does that do? Lets them shoot a guard? Why not stab the guard? They're going to get close enough to do it. The only danger with a gun is maybe being able to shoot the warden himself... getting close enough to shiv him would be hard. But why would a prisoner even want to do that?

                A net isn't going to stop drugs. It isn't going

                • Visitation screens like you describe are only used at max security prisons. Most prisons have a visitation room with normal chairs and a couple of guards standing round the outside. Even in max security prisons most prisoners meet with visitors in an open room. Also there isn't the staffing available for high levels of individual surveillance. In a perfect world visitation would be secure-able but there isn't the budget

                  Thomson correctional centre visitation room which is Max Security- http://photos.myca [mycapture.com]

                  • I think I'd prefer to handle it this way:
                    https://youtu.be/OGvIaX2SaB8?t... [youtu.be]

                    if you haven't seen that movie before, watch from the beginning... great action movie. Can't believe the entire thing is just uploaded onto youtube. The anti piracy people are fucking adorable when they talk about ending that... the black knight from the holy grail if ever there was one.

                    On topic, I'd seriously prefer something like this for the life sentence people. Exile to some bit of land that is effectively impossible to escape. L

                    • Understood. The issue in the end is that there is no money in prisons. It is a net cost and that's it. So they make do with the shoe string budget that they have and inevitably it fails.

                      When you consider that they feed prisoners on under $2.50 a day and they complain about those costs it demonstrates how little money there is available for security and rehabilitation programs.

                      You would know being in security that there is a price to securing a system. If I said to you I want you to secure my 10,000 seat

                    • no budget isn't an argument for no security. It is an argument for fewer features or for adjusting the cost structure.

                      1. Not enough is done to monetize convicts. I AM NOT talking about slave labor. I'm talking consensual voluntary work taken by the free will of the prisoners. Work they take because there are perks to doing so both tangible and intangible. I believe it is possible to get the prisons to operate on a net zero basis at least.

                      2. If you can't afford to give the prisoners feature X on budget Y...

    • Bird netting would probably also work. Nothing a drone can carry will be that heavy.

      Depending on the size of the yard a couple of steel supports and some high tension cables between them as your support web. Then stretch a nylon mesh over them. Cost shouldn't be too high and I would expect it would have a reasonable life span. Your biggest problem will be storm debris with branches and things like that landing on it.

      • I could drop a dart through bird netting... or if you prefer... marble sized heroine packets.

    • They should allow drugs that mellow prisoners out and use access to them as a behavioral control mechanism.

      Would you rather run a prison where men are in cages with no outlets for the boredom, rage and hostility, or run a prison where men can smoke marijuana and mellow out?

      Prison supplied pot would greatly undermine the drug trade which would have all kind of ancillary benefits itself in terms of limiting gang influence, as well as providing an extremely attractive reward economy for good behavior.

      • I don't mind drugs for life sentence prisoners. Give them whatever they want. Heroine... PCP... Crocodile... whatever.

        The general population doesn't work for that because there is a belief they'll be rehabilitated and can be reintroduced into society after their sentence. If you've drugged them then you're just releasing drug addicts.

        As to outlets and boredom... something I'm always a little baffled with from the people that say we shouldn't have a punishment system is that the deterrence wanes if you don't

        • Now that said, we should consider alternative programs. Work programs for example. We use prisoners as axillary fire fighters sometimes for example. Big blaze hits California burning down the forest... and we deploy thousands of immates to fire camps and they cut fire breaks and basically do the worst most back breaking jobs that the professional fire fighters don't want to do. I believe we pay the prisoners 2 dollars a day for their efforts.

          What would I have prisoners do? Anything anyone would want them to do and the prisoners will consent to do. That's another thing... the work I'm talking about is consensual. No one is forced to do it. You can go back to the prison at any time. So what would I have them do... anything they could do... they could answer phones... do paper work... harvest crops (I'm aware of the optics of having fellows in orange harvesting cotton), possibly doing some factory work... anything at all. Just get them jobs... RIGHT NOW... we could have whole industries pop up around these prisons.

          We already have a prison industry. There are plenty of private prisons and we've already seen judges [wikipedia.org] who are more than willing to throw the book at people to earn those prisons extra profit. Can you imagine the motivation to imprison people if you could get employees at $2 a day? You could just move all those factory jobs from China to the US with those labor rates. We probably have almost as many convicts as China has factory workers already. No, if you want prisoners to clean up after a nature disast

          • I'm not talking about the prisons making money off the government by warehousing people. I'm talking about the prison industry itself being cost neutral if it can figure out how to monetize prisoners BESIDES tax revenue.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      No yard. They see the outside through glass or not at all until their term ends.

      The threat with the drones is that someone drops something in a fenced off area that prisoners are allowed to walk around in...

      Actually, they start putting netting up over the yard area - any drone or helicopter (full size!) gets caught in the netting. Sure, a full size helicopter will probably destory the netting, but get caught long enough for someone to either note its registration number, or to actually go arrest the pilot (

      • the copter doesn't need to touch down. It can drop things THROUGH the net unless the net is too fine for things for fall through. Marble sized pellets of heroine for example... or C4... or botulism toxin.

  • you don't want our drones.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    flying over your space....

    guess what?

    we don't want YOURS flying over us, either!

  • Solution 1: RC frequency jamming.
    Solution 2: Nets
    Solution 3: Drone fight!

  • Give the inmates guns and let them shoot down the drones.

  • We just patrol the skies over the prisons with trained flying monkeys.
    With lasers on their heads.

  • Put a damned fence OVER the yard. Drone can't drop shit through a fence.

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