By Scott Daugherty
The Virginian-Pilot
NORFOLK, Va. — Inmate Shawn Jones missed the comforts of life outside prison.
He told investigators at St. Brides Correctional Center last year he didn’t know many people back home, and those few he still knew weren’t sending him money for the prison canteen.
So, he said, he hid a smartphone in his rectum for an inmate friend.
“Jones said that he was not really poor, but had to do what he had to do to support himself and survive,” Sgt. Brian Schuyler wrote in a report.
Jones - who said he did it for tobacco and “stuff” - pleaded guilty last month in Circuit Court to one count of illegal possession of a cellphone by a prisoner. He was sentenced to an additional year in prison.
Jones’ case was not unique. The Virginia Department of Corrections does not track contraband seizures, but the former warden of St. Brides said correctional officers constantly are looking for and recovering the “Big Three": tobacco, drugs and cellphones.
“It’s an ongoing cat-and-mouse game,” said Wendall Pixley, who now serves as warden of Sussex II State Prison in Waverly. “Offenders are always probing every weakness. It’s a full-time job for them.”
Pixley and Larry Traylor, a Department of Corrections spokesman, declined to comment on the Jones case.
Court documents and prosecutors, however, offered some insight into how St. Brides officials recovered a slider phone Oct. 28 from the 6-foot, 190-pound former drug dealer and Virginia Beach resident.
Schuyler wrote in an internal incident report filed with the court that he and another correctional officer found Jones in a private cell about 9:25 a.m. “covered in feces.”
Jones initially told investigators he had an accident because he had to use the restroom and they took too long to open his door.
His cell apparently didn’t have a toilet.
Schuyler wrote he didn’t believe Jones’ story, and thought Jones was trying to recover a phone from his anal cavity. An X-ray confirmed the hidden phone. Commonwealth’s Attorney Nancy Parr said she did not know the exact model of the phone, but said it appeared to look like one manufactured by Blu that measures about 3.3 inches by 1.7 inches.
The report indicates Jones eventually confessed, and passed the phone the following morning.
The phone was not in a bag, prosecutors said. And it did not have a subscriber identity module card inside that enables it to operate.
Jones was serving 11 years for drug and gun convictions from 2007.
He declined knowing anything about the SIM card or the location of the phone’s charger. He also refused to tell investigators who gave it to him to hold three weeks earlier, but said it was brought into the prison by a longtime correctional officer, according to court documents.
Pixley said inmates regularly hide contraband inside their bodies.
“We find that on a fairly frequent basis,” he said, explaining that is why officers require inmates to “squat and cough” during searches. “That’s the lengths these people are willing to go through.”
Pixley added that the “prison” value of most contraband far exceeds the street value. He said a prepaid Tracfone purchased at a convenience store for $20 can be sold inside a prison for several hundred dollars.
“It’s the law of supply-and-demand,” he said. “You have guys in here that are used to having, and some are willing to do almost anything to have it again.”