Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, every President since 1952 has signed a national declaration declaring a National Day of Prayer. It is bipartisan cooperation to recognize people who pray and who set aside time to spend time with God and pray for the Nation. Quite frankly, for us as a party and as a body and as a nation, it is a good thing to pause.

This year, on May 2, with the theme ``Love One Another,'' we will again have a National Day of Prayer. There is not a requirement for Americans to pray. There is not a requirement for people to direct themselves to pray by a certain method at a certain location. It is just a call to the Nation to say that we have great needs as a country.

As we watch the attacks on synagogues in our country, as we watch bombings of Christians in Sri Lanka, gun battles that have erupted in churches in the United States, mosques that have been attacked, people of faith being targeted simply because of their faith, it is reasonable for us as a nation to pause and say ``How are we doing?'' as this year's theme is ``Love One Another.''

We as a nation have a long history of prayer. Hanging in the Rotunda in this Capitol Building is a painting called the Embarkation of the Pilgrims. That painting depicts the beginning of America. It has been hanging in that same spot in the Rotunda since 1843. The painting is simply of a group of people on a deck of a ship leaving out from Europe and huddled around an open Bible and praying. The painting was designed and created to depict how America began in the 1600s--people on the deck of a ship, around an open Bible, praying.

That is still something I would encourage Americans of faith to stop and do, and it is still one of the most humbling experiences that I experience each time someone from my State of Oklahoma catches me, as someone did this morning, and says: Every day, my wife and I pray for you.

It is not a terrible thing to do as a nation--to love and pray for each other and for the future direction of our country.

If I can model for the Nation for just a moment in my own way and encourage the Nation on our National Day of Prayer to pause and pray, I would simply say this:

Let us pray as a nation.

Father, guide us. We need Your help. The controversy, the division in our Nation, the anger, the struggle. Help us to be able to love one another. Help us to be able to see each other as You have created us and to respect You, Your wisdom, and Your guidance. Father, we admit that we do not know as much as You, so we need Your help. We need Your insight.

For our first responders and our military scattered around this Nation and around the world, we pray for Your protection for them. We pray that You would give them insight to help them to represent us well.

For members of our State Department, members in our government who are scattered around the Earth, members of our intelligence community and others who serve us every day, God, would You guide them and would You protect them in their tasks and give them the insight they need.

For Federal employees who serve our Nation each day and for members of our Nation who are finding ways to serve each other in our communities, would You help us this day to love one another and to be able to set the tone for a world that is watching us as a nation.

Help us represent well, You, who You have called us to be as individuals.

In the Name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Contraband Cell Phones in Prison

Mr. President, on Facebook, a posting was made not long ago, and it was sent to a correctional facility in Oklahoma, and this was the posting, simply a question: ``How do I contact the facility regarding your inmates that sex offenders have a cell phone in your prison and they are having contact with children on social media?''

An inmate who is a sex offender with a cell phone in a prison in Oklahoma contacting children should give a chill to all of us. I wish that were the only example. Just in Oklahoma last year, 7,518 cell phones that were contraband cell phones were picked up in Oklahoma prisons--just last year, 7,518 contraband cell phones.

This is within the correctional facility. This is from one of the facilities. That table is 12 feet long, and in many spots, the cell phones are stacked up 10 deep on this picture. These were all taken from inside the prison. Do you want to know what that looks like for the whole State and how that is gathered? The picture would look like this. This is the gathering of cell phones from my State, from correctional facilities across the State.

The challenge that we have is--for all of us--how do we stop these cell phones from getting inside the prison? That is a corruption issue, and sometimes it is a perimeter issue. It will be wrapped in duct tape and thrown over the fence. It will be slipped through at some point. A guard or someone who works inside the prison will be paid off to deliver it and drop it in a certain spot. The result of it is the same: contact with people on the outside--contact that leads to dramatic effects. It is not only contact with people outside, like these predators who are sex offenders reaching out to children from inside the prison, but over and over again there are consequences.

We have the consequences of individuals--for instance, white-collar criminals who are continuing to run their companies. There was the famous occasion of the person known as the Pharma Bro, who bought out pharmaceutical companies, drove out competition, jacked up the prices, and ended up going to Federal prison, but even from prison he was able to get access to a cell phone and continue running his pharmacy operation from inside the prison.

There was an occasion not long ago in Oklahoma where an individual who was a murderer and, while he was in the State penitentiary, used cell phones to direct others to distribute methamphetamine for him across all of Northeastern Oklahoma. He was running a meth ring with his cell phone from inside the prison.

There was a prison facility, Lee Correctional Institution, where there was a mass riot that broke out inside the facility. In that riot seven inmates were killed and 17 others were injured. This happened in South Carolina. Afterward the South Carolina Department of Corrections director blamed cell phones for fueling the deadliest prison riot they had in South Carolina.

In another case, back in an Oklahoma prison, many of those charged within the prison have gang ties--MS-13, Crips, Indian Brotherhood, Universal Aryan Brotherhood, Irish Mob. Records show that those individuals had access to cell phones and were running their gangs outside the prison from inside the prison. We have one individual who is serving 20 years in prison for robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon and drug manufacturing and who used his cell phone to control the methamphetamine distribution and transactions outside the prison.

We have a RICO case in the Northern District of Oklahoma right now, which is racketeering, which is happening from large numbers of cell phones in an Aryan Brotherhood gang, a White supremacist group that is operating a drug ring outside the prison and coordinating their work and operation inside the prison.

This is not unique to Oklahoma. This is happening in prisons all over the country. We can go to one after another after another.

The two issues that have to be addressed are stopping the flow within, but the second, more obvious question that I hear from people when I raise this issue is this: Why can't the prisons just jam the cell phones?

That is a great question. Federal law does not allow State prisons to jam the cell phones.

Why don't we change that law?

That is another great question, and it should have been answered by this body a long time ago. But communications companies and cell phone company lobbyists overwhelmed this body and pushed back and said: Let's study the issue.

For years the cell phone lobby has come to Members of Congress and said: We totally agree with you that this is a problem. Let's study it.

I have met personally now for several years with the leadership of the FCC, which has jurisdiction over this, and said ``Let's resolve this issue about prison cell phones,'' and every year when I meet with FCC folks, they say ``We are studying it.'' At the same time, meth rings and sexual predators are operating inside our prisons. ``We are studying it.''

I waited patiently until the last study just came out. The summary of the last study that just came out on cell phones in prisons and jamming them--the study basically came back and said: We need more study on this issue. That was the result of the study.

One of the prisons got permission and a waiver to test a cell phone jammer in their prison with what is called a microjammer; they can put a jammer to block the cell phone coverage in one particular housing unit. They came back with the results of that from one individual State prison and said it was successful. The cell phone companies responded by saying: Hey, we wish you would have included us in that study. We should have been involved in that study. We need to do another study on top of your study to make sure it is all correct. Study after study after study is done when this is what is happening in our prisons.

So let me just bring this up to the cell phone industry: You do not want your company name attached to pedophiles in prisons who are contacting children outside the prison, waiting until they are released. You do not want your company name attached to a meth ring being operated inside a prison because you wanted to study the issue more. You do not want your company name attached to a prison riot where they directly linked the access to cell phones as leading up to that riot.

Every one of the major cell phone companies in the United States has done lab testing of jammers in their labs. This is not something that needs to be studied again. They all know the results.

What is worse, if you go back to 2005--New Zealand had already seen this issue arising in 2005. New Zealand worked with all of the cell phone companies in their country, and guess what. They studied it and implemented a policy to start jamming cell phones in their prisons in the following years. The cell phone companies overseas have already studied this in New Zealand.

Let's take it to the UK in 2012. In 2011, all of the cell phone companies worked with the UK Government to be able to study cell phones in prisons, came to a decision about the best way to jam those signals, and, in 2012, the UK passed a piece of legislation to get this resolved.

So this has been studied in labs; it has been studied in New Zealand; it has been studied in the UK; and all we are hearing is it needs to be studied more here.

My suggestion is simple. Let's jam cell phones in prisons for the protection of our guards, our families, and to block criminal activity operating from inside our prisons. We know how to do this. We have the technology to do this. This body needs to address it in law and make sure it gets resolved in the days ahead. I look forward to passing that and not doing one more study to delay action on it.

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