State and local prisons and jails across the country may soon be allowed to block communications from contraband cellphones, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said Wednesday.
The agency plans to vote next month on an order that would authorize detention centers to jam calls and texts from cellphones that the FCC says prisoners are using to “order hits, coordinate violent gang activity and aid criminal enterprises.”
Some law enforcement officials, attorneys general and lawmakers have long sought to block these communications. But prison justice advocates worry disrupting contraband phones will hinder a way for prisoners to keep in touch with loved ones without the cost and privacy concerns of calls from facility phones.
Jamming, or the use of strong radio frequencies to interfere with communication between cellphones and cell towers, is not new technology. But state prisons and jails are barred by federal law from using the technology to curtail the use of contraband cellphones.
Exceptions have already been carved out for federal prisons. The FCC’s order seeks to expand those exceptions to state and local prisons by reinterpreting how the agency enforces the statute.
“While the FCC has authorized a range of solutions in the past, it has stopped short of allowing jamming,” Carr said in a statement. “That ends today.”
Worth Rises, a New York-based nonprofit that seeks to dismantle the for-profit prison industry, has been advocating against cellphone jams for years. Bianca Tylek, the organization’s executive director, said Wednesday that the FCC’s order fails to address the root cause of the issue, which is contraband cellphones getting into detention centers in the first place.
The United States Sentencing Commission has found that in sentencings of prisoners for cellphone contraband between 2019 and 2023, the phone was smuggled in by prison employees 39 percent of the time.
“Get at the root, not the symptom,” Tylek said. “The root causes are that communication inside is too expensive, surveillance is excessive and unfair to families who have a loved one who is incarcerated, and you have an issue around … accountability around your officers.”
Plus, Tylek said, most contraband phones are used to talk with loved ones outside the prison or jail, not to commit crimes.
Exact rules vary by state, but prisoners are often only allowed to use designated phones for limited periods of time to call approved outside numbers. The calls can cost money — anywhere from $0.09 to $0.17 per minute, depending on the size of the institution. The FCC eased caps last year on how much companies can charge, increasing the maximum allowable price in some detention centers.
Prison and jail phone calls can be recorded and monitored — and in some places, audio and metadata archived.
State and local law enforcement officials have been advocating for the FCC to let more detention facilities jam phones for more than a decade, citing situations in which contraband phones have been used for illegal activity. Last year, the Georgia attorney general’s office won convictions in a case that involved prisoners using contraband cellphones to facilitate organized crime.
Some private citizens and mobile carriers have resisted the FCC’s previous attempts to loosen the ban on phone jamming, saying that doing so could undermine 911 access or the communications of private citizens who are near the prison.
The FCC declined to comment Wednesday on whether it plans to address those concerns in its order, which it plans to make public Thursday. A vote on the document is scheduled for Nov. 19.
Carr announced the order Wednesday alongside Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin. Cotton introduced a bicameral bill in March 2025 that would block the FCC from banning prisons from using jamming equipment. The bill has not moved forward in either chamber.
Griffin was part of a bipartisan group of 31 attorneys general who signed a letter last year encouraging party leadership in the House and Senate to act on Cotton’s legislation.
“Current federal law severely restricts our ability to implement effective countermeasures,” the group wrote. “While we have access to some technological solutions, we cannot deploy the most effective tool available — cellphone jamming systems—which leaves our prisons vulnerable and our communities at risk.”
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