Georgia Can't Block Its Way Out of Prison Phone Scams. Let the Phones In, and Listen.

A Florida sheriff traced jury-duty scams to two Georgia prisons. One victim lost $15,000. Georgia's answer is more blocking. The phones are already inside. https://gps.press/georgia-cant-block-its-way-out-of-prison-phone-scams-let-the-phones-in-and-listen/

A Florida sheriff says jury-duty scams are being run from Calhoun State Prison and Wheeler Correctional Institution. Roughly two dozen arrests in a year. One woman near Daytona Beach lost $15,000. Meanwhile, Georgia seized 12,483 cellphones between November 2021 and August 2023, and GDC's own arrest reports name 357 staff arrested for contraband — 271 of them officers. The supply isn't shrinking because the demand is real: family, education, legal work, and calling for help when staff don't come. Georgia law already lets a warden authorize a phone. A managed access system can register devices, record permitted calls, flag a jury-duty script in progress, and keep attorney calls off the monitored side. Blocking yields a number. Monitoring yields a call. If the phones are already in, and the state's own reports show staff bringing them through the front door, what is Georgia actually protecting by refusing to authorize them?

A Florida sheriff traced jury-duty scams to two Georgia prisons. Roughly two dozen arrests in a year. One woman lost $15,000. Georgia's answer: more blocking. But GDC seized 12,483 phones between November 2021 and August 2023, and its own arrest reports name 357 staff arrested for contraband. The phones are already inside. Georgia law already lets a warden authorize a phone. A registered, monitored system could flag a scam script while it's happening instead of a sheriff finding it a year later. Full story at the link in bio. #GeorgiaPrisons #PrisonPhoneJustice #MassIncarceration #CriminalJusticeReform #GPSNewsroom

Two Georgia prisons are the alleged source of a jury-duty scam that a Florida sheriff has spent a year chasing — roughly two dozen arrests, with one victim near Daytona Beach losing $15,000. Georgia's Department of Corrections points to contraband interdiction, managed access systems already in some facilities, and new federal counter-drone authority. A second Georgia sheriff has asked Congress for cell-phone blocking authority instead. Both approaches run into the same wall. The DOJ's October 2024 findings counted 12,483 cellphones recovered by GDC between November 2021 and August 2023, and GDC's own published arrest reports name at least 357 staff arrested for contraband, including 271 officers. The DOJ put the correctional officer vacancy rate near 50 percent systemwide and above 70 percent at ten of the largest facilities. Georgia's statute, O.C.G.A. § 42-5-18, already permits a warden to authorize a phone. A registered-device system with recorded calls, attorney carve-outs, and AI pattern review would let the state interrupt a fraud while it happens rather than reconstruct it from another jurisdiction's case file. The policy question is not whether phones are in Georgia prisons. It is whether the state wants to see what they carry.