No phones – yet phones exist

Journalists and public figures learn a great deal of information about various ‘mishaps’ in the Kherson penal institutions via calls from colonies or pre-trial detention centres. But, unfortunately, it is not the staff who call first, but the convicts and those under arrest.
In the States and Europe, one can call from such institutions (with the exception of pre-trial detention centres) as much as one wants and to whomever one wants – provided one has the money in their account, or their relatives do (their operator warns that the conversation is at their expense). Here, a phone call is a privilege, limited not only by the amount of time but also by the frequency of the calls themselves. There are convicts who simply cannot use this privilege at all: and not because there is no one to call. It is simply because there is no work – and no money in the account. Sometimes relatives top up the account specifically for this purpose. But to make a call, one must ask a staff member to buy a card and escort them to the phone (since the payphones are not located in the living area, let alone the units). So, relatives try to come up with various ways to ‘deliver’ a mobile phone to the colony. And the colony staff actively search for and confiscate them, because the ‘special contingent’ is prohibited from possessing telephone handsets. According to the data of the State Department for the Execution of Punishments in the Kherson region, up to fifty mobile phones are discovered and confiscated every week.
Perhaps the most unusual method of transferring a mobile phone was recorded by the controllers of the Daryivska Penal Colony — the phones were discovered inside hermetically sealed tin cans. If it were not for the noticeable difference in weight between the mass indicated on the packaging and the real weight, the trick would hardly have been discovered. But the easiest way to pass a phone to a convict is to throw it over the prison fence. But, as a rule, such ‘manna from heaven’ is immediately spotted by security service staff.