Aló, This Prison Calling!
Beginning the middle of May, inmates at the country's prisons will not be able to use the public telephones installed in the institutions to harass and scam those on the outside.

The 415 public telephones installed in the prisons will have a security feature that will alert those on the receiving end of a call, that the call is coming from a prison and can choose to accept it or not.

The system is simple in it's operation and will be first installed at the Centro de Admisión Institucional (C.A.I) de San Rafael, according to Ministra de Justicia, Patricia Vega.

If the call is accepted, a reminder is made every minute of where the call is coming from a jail. Callers to a jail, just in case they don't know where their call is going as in the case of a missed call on a caller ID, will be told that the call is being made to a telephone at a prison.

The Ministerio de Justicia has been working on a solution to the problem for more than a year, when it was discovered that prison inmates, with help from those on the outside, where using public telephones in the prisons to make threatening calls and for extortion.

Inmates would dial a number and ask the for a deposit to be made to a bank account or harm would come to them or their family. Reports to police alerted prison officials to the problem.

Minister Vega said that this is only the first step in their plan. In the near future, according to the Minister, an inmate will be assigned a number of 10-15 digits and an access code that will be required to make a phone call. If the inmate doesn't dial the correct sequence, the telephone company will automatically terminate the call.