WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today joined U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) in introducing legislation to prevent inmates from using contraband cellphones in correctional facilities. The Cellphone Jamming Reform Act of 2025 would allow state and federal prisons to use cellphone jamming systems.  

Yesterday, Graham met with Bryan Stirling, Director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, and discussed this legislation.

“I have been meeting with the Director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections Bryan Stirling and his team for years trying to get federal legislation that would jam cellphone signals in corrections institutions. Cellphones in prisons are widely used by inmates to communicate with drug cartels, human traffickers and gun runners. Bryan and his team have made it real to me that cellphones in prisons aid and abet lawbreaking.

“I completely support Senator Cotton’s legislation that would stop this practice. This needs to come to an end,” said Graham.

The legislation is also cosponsored by U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi), James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), and James Risch (R-Idaho). Congressman David Kustoff (R-Tennessee) is leading companion legislation in the House.

Background:

• The use of contraband cellphones is widespread in both federal and state prison facilities. Inmates have used contraband cellphones to conduct illegal activities, including ordering hits on individuals outside of the prison walls, running illegal drug operations, conducting illegal business deals, facilitating sex trafficking, and organizing escapes which endanger correctional employees, other inmates, and members of the public.
• In 2018, a gang fight over territory using cellphones to trade contraband sparked a brawl inside the Lee Correctional Institution near Bishopville, South Carolina, and left seven inmates dead and 20 injured.
• Last year, two 13-year-old boys were killed at a birthday party in Atlanta after inmates in a Georgia prison used contraband cellphones to order their murder. In 2024, Georgia authorities confiscated more than 15,500 contraband cellphones and seized more than 8,000 in 2023.
• In December 2024, two California inmates were convicted of murder, racketeering, and other RICO-related crimes for running a heroin and meth trafficking operation from their prison cells. 
• Bureau of Prisons Correctional officer Lt. Osvaldo Albarati was murdered in 2013 for interrupting an illicit contraband cellphone business. His actual assassination was initiated by an inmate using a contraband cellphone to contact the gunman as outlined in the indictment.                                                                                                      

####