Idaho prisoners gaining more access to banned phones, drugs. Drone drops may be to blame

A marked uptick in banned materials inside Idaho’s prison system has led to growing concerns over the use of drones, which prisoners have employed to drop drugs and cellphones — and possibly to help with an escape.

In the past year, prison officials suspect at least one attempt to introduce contraband with a drone at the main prison complex south of Boise. They hope to leverage a new carve-out in federal law and a proactive approach to the increasing issue nationwide to prevent prisoners from gaining access to prohibited items.

Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt said that if the use of drones at prisons in the state isn’t pervasive yet, it’s not far off. He pointed to sophisticated drone operations to deliver contraband to incarcerated people already happening around the country.

“Even though we don’t have a significant history of drone drops or drones being used that we can confirm to bring in contraband, we know it’s only a matter of time,” Tewalt said in an interview with the Idaho Statesman.

Regardless, he said, Idaho prison officials have confiscated more cellphones this year than in the entirety of Tewalt’s time with the department, which dates to 2011. He took over as its director in December 2018 and is determined to avoid letting contraband, including cellphones, become more widespread at a time when new technologies threaten to upend usual operations of the state’s prison system.

A contraband cellphone, for instance, likely aided in the March escape of maximum security prisoner Skylar Meade, 32, from Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise during a planned ambush. Fellow suspect Nicholas Umphenour, 28, was charged with helping Meade break free during a hospital visit for treatment. Police said Umphenour shot two correction officers, and a third was shot by a Boise police officer when he responded to the early-morning incident.

During Meade’s sentencing last week, prosecutors showed text messages between him and Umphenour, some exchanged while Meade was still in prison, that detailed their plans to ambush the IDOC officers and escape from the hospital, according to previous Statesman reporting.

The two men were captured in the Twin Falls area after a 36-hour statewide manhunt. During that time, police suspect that Meade and Umphenour killed two men in North Idaho. The suspects were indicted in the killing of an 83-year-old Juliaetta man, and also are believed to have killed a 72-year-old Orofino-area man, though charges have yet to be filed.

Elsewhere, two men in Georgia made national headlines in 2019 when they were caught using drones to deliver contraband inside a state prison. Their plan was to deliver 14 cellphones, four rounds of ammunition and 75 grams of tobacco, according to a WIRED Magazine report . They became two of the first U.S. federal prosecutions for “serving as an airman without an airman’s certificate.”

High-profile drone incidents have garnered significant state and national attention. They also showed the potential consequences of prisoners’ unauthorized access to cellphones — regardless of the methods used to get them inside prison walls, Tewalt said.

“It’s not just the means of how that contraband makes its way into our correctional institutions. At its core it’s the damage that contraband can do,” he said. “So for us, it’s looking at every potential way that those phones could have gotten into our system, and there’s not just one way, but drones was a possibility that we continue to look at.”

Evolving drone technology adds to challenges

The use of drones to introduce contraband into prisons became more prevalent in the U.S. in recent years, so much so that the issue drew the attention of the Department of Justice. The Federal Aviation Administration barred drones from flying over federal prisons in June 2018.

The FAA covers federal prisons under its special authority , but state prisons do not qualify, an FAA spokesperson wrote in an email to the Statesman. At least seven states have passed laws to ban drones flying over state prisons: Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee and Virginia. Idaho has no such law.

In some documented incidents across the country, drones dropped drugs into prison yards, sometimes using fishing line to dangle them directly into the possession of prisoners — often in the middle of the day. One of the most common deliveries is cellphones, which can be worth thousands of dollars in prisons and allow inmates to access the internet and involve themselves in criminal matters like drug deals, according to a report from The Marshall Project .

“You have a criminal already incarcerated, and if you introduce means to further crimes … they’re going to take advantage of that in every evil way that you can conceive,” Idaho state Rep. Bruce Skaug told the Statesman by phone. “So it’s an ongoing battle that we cannot give up on.”

Prisons in Idaho weren’t designed to withstand modern technology threats like drones. Of the 10 prisons in Idaho, nine were opened in 2000 or earlier. Five of them were built before 1990. Idaho State Correctional Institution, the oldest prison, opened in 1972.

Meanwhile, the technology for drones — also known as unmanned aircraft systems — is constantly evolving, which makes for yet another challenge in the battle against its use around prisons.

“As drones become more autonomous and as their technology improves,” Tewalt said, “there’s another industry that’s out there working on ways to help thwart them being used for illicit purposes.”

Prison systems in the U.S. are barred from shooting drones down or using a net to capture them. They also can’t break the frequency link between the drone and its controller. Destroying a drone is a federal crime and punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Only the Justice, Defense, Homeland Security and Energy departments may use technologies to interrupt the frequency of drones, according to existing federal law .

And prison sentences for delivering contraband into prisons can be light. The FAA regulates federal prisons, but smuggling contraband into a state facility isn’t a federal offense. All of Idaho’s prisons are state-run.

“I support a shotgun approach to the problem,” Skaug said. “I don’t know what the director’s view on that is, but if they actually saw one landing in there, I hope they would have a shotgun handy and take action rather than just making a phone call to the FAA.”

If deemed beneficial, Skaug believes a bill similar to the ones already on the books in other states would pass in Idaho. As chair of the House judiciary committee, he said he is also open to sponsoring it.

For now, Tewalt thinks inclusion this year of language specifically about prisons in the FAA funding and policy law to restrict federal airspace around all corrections facilities will help. It should arm states with the ability to take a more strategic approach to circumventing drones as a means for getting contraband to prisoners, he said.

“We don’t think it’s going to stop people from attempting, but it certainly is going to increase our arsenal,” Tewalt said.

D.C. proposals could offer local counter-drone authority

DZYNE Technologies, an autonomous defense technology company, is part of the push to prevent the use of drones around prisons and other public facilities from becoming a greater problem. The Southern California-based firm operates a test site near Kuna, not far from Idaho’s main prison complex, for new counter-drone technology.

The convoluted patchwork of federal laws and restrictions in the U.S. makes it an obstacle to stay a step ahead of bad actors using drones right off the shelf with the latest technology, company officials told the Statesman.

“The legal landscape is challenging to say the least,” Al White, DZYNE’s executive vice president of air defense technologies, said in a video interview with the Statesman. “So that’s some of the advanced research that we’re trying to do so that we can bring solutions to bear … without violating all these civil liberties and legal challenges that the current systems get tripped up on.”

Idaho’s federal lawmakers also are involved in the effort. U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, a former county prosecutor, and Rep. Mike Simpson have supported spending additional federal funds toward research on more advanced unmanned aircraft technologies.

DZYNE and other companies in the industry are investing in new ways to use existing technology, like a type of radar called lidar that uses laser lights and 5G mobile networks, to spot drones where they’re banned. Detecting them is one thing, but stopping them is another issue altogether, White said.

“Even taking a shotgun and trying to shoot down a drone or something violates the Aircraft Sabotage Act,” he said. “So the only thing that prisons and airports and critical infrastructure operators have to hang their hat on is the FAA Reauthorization to detect and mitigate.”

A couple of proposals working their way through Congress could begin to offer potential solutions. They would provide levels of training and authority to various local officials to take their own counter-drone measures when they feel it necessary, rather than have to call on federal agencies to intervene.

How quickly either federal legislative option may gain the support needed on Capitol Hill to put into practice is less clear.

“It’s going to take a major event before people get serious about the need for these delegated counter-drone authorities,” said Joe Francescon, DZYNE’s chief of government affairs. “There’s a groundswell of concern that’s been driven really by the corporate side … in addition to the operators like the prisons and others who have been screaming for this and the additional resources that would be required.”

In the interim, the company recommended that public agencies, including prison systems, consider existing low-cost drone detection systems. Doing so will “show that the drone threat is real and actually at home,” Francescon said, to help justify expanding counter-drone capabilities at local and regional levels.

With evidence of at least one attempt to use a drone to drop contraband at Idaho’s main prison complex near Kuna — and perhaps others that went undetected — Tewalt envisions the new federal recognition of state prisons starting to thread the needle to limit prisoners from obtaining items that threaten public safety.

“I just know that to date if we avail ourselves of certain technology, we may be able to detect them, which can be helpful,” he said. “But being able to actually bring them down or stop them at certain points, that hasn’t been on the table for us.”