In a recent news, drones have been used for the illegal transportation of contraband such as phones, drugs, and porn into numerous federal prisons all over the US for the past 5 years. An information was recovered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that the dandy little UAVs were also said used for similar purposes at state holding facilities.
At a high-security federal prison in Victorville, California, an inmate got a friend to deliver two cell smartphones to the facility via drone in March 2015, according to FOIA files. It went easily at least for the smuggler and inmate with the incident only coming to light months after. However, this isn't just a one-off act of illegal smuggling with the help of a hobby drone. This has happened also in numerous cities all over America such as Oakdale, Louisiana, Seagoville, Texas, Atwater, California, and Cumberland, Maryland. And though mobile phones could be somewhat harmless, drones are also being used to deliver drugs in and out of prison.
More so, criminals are capitalizing on drones' potential while entrepreneurial companies which include Amazon are using them to announce services like Amazon Prime Air, which delivers packages weighing up to five pounds in a span of 30 minutes or less. The documents also detail multiple attempts by inmates to smuggle illicit property into some guarded facilities.
In 2016, a recently released inmate and two accomplices were condemned of smuggling drugs and porn into Maryland's Western Correctional Institution with the aid of a drone. Police said several nighttime missions appointed the three perpetrators about $6,000 per drop. The Federal Aviation Administration does not yet enforce laws that obstruct drones from flying across sensitive sites. Furthermore, a pending Senate Bill, the Drone Federalism Act, will "affirm state regulatory authority regarding the operation of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or drones."
