South Carolina prisoner keeps appearing on Facebook Live and guards are clueless

A prisoner in the US has been mystifying guards after he was discovered posting several Facebook Live videos from within the jail.

The inmate named as Joel Ariel Rivera is serving 10 years at the Evans Corrections Institutes in Bennettsville, South Carolina has been broadcasting a series of livestream videos despite a ban on mobile phones at the facility.

In one Facebook Live post he is even seen brandishing a knife and walking the corridors of the prison to take viewers on a tour as he says: "Yo, we live. We gotta show you around." There was no guard to be seen. Rivera's audacious antics have got prison officials baffled and concerned as to how both contraband items have been smuggled into the jail.

According to a report by local news outlet KHOU the videos are the latest example of how inmates are getting unauthorised access to phones, which is a problem the corrections department needs federal help to combat.

Rivera, who is serving time for a 2014 burglary conviction, has been using the livestreaming video platform to communicate with people on the outside including his partner and sending threats to a man allegedly communicating with his child's mother.

"Baby momma is tripping," he says in one livestream. "But she watching, though. And she loving me, though...They love me in here. You hear me? Big knives and all."

Rivera has reportedly been reprimanded several times in the last five months for having unauthorised access to a mobile phone and using social media, which has led to him losing visitation, television and canteen privileges.

Along with the videos Rivera has been active on Facebook, updating his profile picture and status as recently as Thursday 10 August. The livestreams prompted officials to call for tougher actions to ban phone signals in prisons. According to news site WISTV, Earlier this year, an inmate at a correctional institution was able to escape thanks largely in part due to a contraband phone.

"The fact that [inmates] are able to get on social media off a cell phone inside of a prison, is ridiculous," state senator Brad Hutto told WISTV.

"Most of these folks have victims that are associated with their crimes, and the victim should not be subjected to seeing anymore of the shenanigans that's going on with these Facebook posts and Twitter or whatever they're using to get these messages out," he said.

A prison in the UK was recently at the centre of outrage after it was discovered inmates were able to log into Wi-Fi from neighbouring houses to watch porn on smuggled devices. The residents were shocked that criminals were able to access such content and protested for ways to prevent Wi-Fi or cellular signals passing the prison walls.