Provincial Jail Warden Romeo Manansala lobbied for the installation of signal jammers in the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) to block incoming network signals of cellular phones inside the facility.
This after Manansala and Capitol jail consultant Marco Toral presented the confiscated 285 cellphones to Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III at the Capitol yesterday.
Manansala said the phones were recovered through their greyhound operations while other inmates voluntarily surrendered the items to the jail guards within the year.
The inmates caught in possession of the phones were made to spend a month in the isolated detention cell.
To avoid detection, Manansala said inmates who have cellphones toss the device in the jail corridor during inspections.
Despite their security measures, Manansala said some visitors are still able to sneak in the phones.
He said these visitors place the phone inside packed lunches which make it difficult for jail guards to detect.
Most of the cellphone owners, he said, were female inmates.
“They use it to contact their families, friends, some even go online and access the Internet,” he said. Asked if they were able to recover any deadly weapons inside the cells, Manansala said no.
“In our facility, we can assure the public that there are no deadly weapons.”