SC Department of Corrections officer charged with trying to smuggle cellphone into prison
Columbia SC June 6 2018 A correctional officer with just two months under her belt could spend years in prison after she tried to smuggle a cellphone into Turbeville Correctional Institution, prison officials announced Monday.
Kyontae Ty’ Tiauna Moni Stroman, of 1340 Longcreek Drive, Apartment 1217, Columbia was arrested Sunday and charged with furnishing or attempting to furnish a prisoner with contraband, violation of the state ethics law and misconduct in office.
Her age was redacted from arrest warrants and a booking photo was not immediately available. According to the Clarendon County Public Index, she was born in 1993.
On Saturday — exactly two months after she started working at the medium-security prison — Stroman was caught trying to bring a cellphone and charger that were hidden inside her state-issued vest into Turbeville Correctional in exchange for $700, according to arrest warrants.
Two of the counts Stroman faces carry fines of up to $10,000 and prison terms as long as 10 years.
The warrants do not name the intended recipient of the cellphone. The prison currently houses more than 1,000 inmates.
Three weeks after Stroman started working for the prison system, then-acting U.S. attorney for the South Carolina District Beth Drake said South Carolina’s prisons have a “crisis in contraband.” That comment came during a press conference about 14 former prison workers being indicted on federal contraband charges.
State and federal officials have especially taken issue with the stream of cellphones making their way into state prisons.
Smartphones with touch screens and internet capabilities are common contraband, according to federal prosecutors, and prison officials are making a concerted effort to get FCC approval to use cellphone-jamming technology while trying to stymie the tide of smuggled goods into the state’s facilities. More than 7,000 cellphones, or about one for every three inmates, were seized from South Carolina correctional institutions in 2014 and 2015.
In recent years, cellphones have been linked to a ring of inmates who continued to run their drug operation from behind bars, a prisoner’s attempt to buy a mail bomb so he could try again to kill his ex-wife — his last attempt earned him a 50-year sentence — and prisons chief Bryan Stirling blamed cellphones for the spread of the April riot at Lee Correctional across three dorms.
Last month, the state Department of Corrections announced at least eight contraband arrests, which included a Greenwood woman accused of trying to smuggle cocaine in to a convicted sex offender at maximum-security Lieber Correctional in Ridgeville.
