JAILHOUSE ROCK
''The warden threw a party in the county jail
The prison band was there and they began to wail
The band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing
You should've heard those knocked out jailbirds sing''
(Elvis Presley 1957)
Penitentiary facilities are known to mankind for thousands of years, since the era when rules and laws were formulated in order to build organized communities. Since then, the imprisonment of the criminal serves not only as punishment and example for the community, but also as a form of revenge and deterrence against those who have not yet consciously and fully chosen the criminal life. For the enforcement agencies, putting the offender in jail is one of the main goals of their activity, and in many cases, the incarceration of the offender will stop or reduce the activity of the enforcement systems against him for the duration of his time in prison. unfortunately, the prison does not disconnect the offender from the cycle of crime, perhaps the opposite. Turning the offender into a 'prisoner' gives him significant 'upgrade':
1. The prison serves as a 'crime academy' – a criminal who spends few years in jail prison, is exposed to a great deal of criminal knowledge and advances in the 'criminal ranks', and at the same time he learns about the legal system, its weaknesses and flaws, and thus, during the years of imprisonment, he becomes a professional criminal, who will be much more difficult target to gather evidence against and act against him in his next round outside the prison. 2. Prison strengthens the prisoner's connections – while the offender who is active outside the prison walls is forced to operate within organized crime frameworks or rely on ad hoc connections, the prisoner receives a long 'quality time' with other prisoners and trust-based connections are created, which are reminiscent of family ties among well-known criminal organizations.
3. Prison gives the prisoner a stamp of 'credibility' in the criminal world – as many criminals say: 'A criminal who didn't spend few years in jail will always be suspected of collaborating with the police'. This is especially true for offenders who have been arrested several times but somehow weren't convicted, or who have been arrested on suspicion of serious offenses and the indictment filed against them has been meager. The more the offender is convicted and the more years of imprisonment he has been sentenced, the higher his prestige in the eyes of the criminal environment, and the more he is expected to gain trust in the eyes of his peers. Both during and after the prison term. Everyone understands that this is a criminal who respects the codes of crime life and does not cooperate with the police. Prison as a kind of 'black hole' When we conducted complex investigations against criminal organizations, we discovered that despite the use of advanced investigative and intelligence tools, there were 'black holes' in the information and in the mapping of the activity of the criminal organizations and in understanding the real connections between the criminals inside and outside the organization. These 'black holes' have impaired the process of gathering evidence. At a later stage, we realized that the connections that disappeared from our eyes were those that were created between prisoners within the prison walls. Prisoners who served long sentences in one cell developed strong connections and trust. They have become a force multiplier in the criminal world, with each of them bringing into the equation of crime their connections outside of prison. The prison has become a hub for criminal activity, which is actually run by the prisoners. Since law enforcement agencies operate according to priorities and targets, putting the target in jail diverts resources to shift towards another target, which has a more significant impact on crime. For this reason, prisons are at the bottom of the hierarchy of law enforcement systems and therefore do not receive much attention and budgets, but the intelligence and investigative potential that is stored within the prison walls is enormous, and the prison authorities are forced to deal with the challenges they face on their own and hope for crumbs from the budgets granted to other law enforcement organizations. The world is changing rapidly and criminals work hard to be ahead of the game. Prisons are no longer isolated and sterile. Prisoners are conducting criminal activities from within the prison cell, having unsupervised and unauthorized communication with the outside world. Drugs and weapons are smuggled into the prison and organized crime managed by inmates, giving orders to assassin, hit and rob on the outside. Prisoners are involved in many criminal activities outside the prison walls, and in many cases law enforcement agencies are not aware or unable to identify the responsible. This is where JENOVICE Cyber labs comes into the picture. Jenovice has the solution that allows to detect all the smartphones in jail, identify them and do other cool things in order to get intelligence and evidence and prevent crimes. For more details you can write to guy.nir@jenovice.com and we can schedule a demo. Brigadier General (r) Guy Nir April 2025