A manager who controlled safety at a South Carolina reformatory accredited greater than $219,000 in bribes over 3 years and were given 173 contraband mobile phones for inmates, consistent with federal prosecutors.
Christine Mary Livingston, 46, was once indicted previous this month on 15 fees together with bribery, conspiracy, cord fraud and cash laundering.
Livingston labored for the South Carolina Division of Corrections for 16 years. She was once promoted to captain at Extensive River Correctional Establishment in 2016, which put her accountable for safety on the medium-security Columbia reformatory, investigators stated.
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Livingston labored with an inmate, 33-year-old Jerell Reaves, to simply accept bribes for mobile phones and different contraband equipment. They might take $1,000 to $7,000 over the sensible telephone Money App cash switch program for a telephone, consistent with the federal indictment unsealed Thursday.
Reaves was once referred to as Hell Rell and Livingston was once referred to as Hell Rell’s Queen, federal prosecutors stated.
Each withstand twenty years in reformatory, a $250,000 advantageous and an order to pay again the cash they earned illegally if convicted.
Reaves is serving a 15-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter within the capturing of a person at a Marion County comfort retailer in 2015.
Legal professionals for Livingston and Reaves didn’t reply to emails Friday.
Contraband mobile phones in South Carolina prisons had been a long-running drawback. Corrections Director Bryan Stirling stated inmates have run drug rings, fraud schemes and feature even ordered killings from in the back of bars.
A South Carolina reformatory manager is accused of taking on $219,000 in bribes and offering 173 contraband mobile phones to inmates.
A 2018 rebellion that killed seven inmates at Lee Correctional Instinct was once fueled through mobile phones.
“This girl broke the general public believe in South Carolina, making our prisons much less protected for inmates, personnel and the neighborhood. We can completely now not tolerate officials and workers bringing contraband into our prisons, and I’m satisfied she is being held responsible,” Stirling stated in a remark.
The South Carolina reformatory machine has implored federal officers to allow them to jam mobile phone indicators in prisons however have not gotten permission.
Lately, they have got had luck with a tool that identifies all mobile phones on reformatory grounds, permitting workers to request cell phone carriers block the unauthorized numbers, even if Stirling’s company hasn’t been given sufficient cash to increase it past a one-prison pilot program.
In January, Stirling posted a video from a pissed off inmate calling a tech make stronger hotline when his telephone now not labored asking the employee “what can I do to get it grew to become again on?” and being instructed he had to name a Corrections Division hotline.
From July 2022 to June 2023, state reformatory officers issued 2,179 violations for inmates possessing banned verbal exchange gadgets, and because 2015, greater than 35,000 mobile phones had been discovered. The reformatory machine has about 16,000 inmates.
Stirling has driven for the Common Meeting to go a invoice specifying mobile phones are unlawful in prisons as an alternative of being incorporated in a extensive class of contraband and permitting as much as an additional 12 months to be tacked on a sentence for having an unlawful telephone, with as much as 5 years for a 2nd offense.
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That invoice has now not made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
