A federal judge sentenced a former prison guard at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center to three years of probation for allowing an inmate to use her cell telephone and later giving the inmate a cell phone of his own.

Venita T. Ramirez pleaded guilty today to two counts of providing prison contraband.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard L. Puglisi accepted Ramirez’s guilty pleas and sentenced her to the probation.

Ramirez pleaded guilty to providing inmate William Clifford use of her cell phone from March 14 to April 30 last year and to providing him another cell phone May 5 to June 2.

Clifford was at the detention center awaiting trial for a charge of attempted methamphetamine possession.

He pleaded guilty March 17 and was sentenced Dec. 9 to 20 years in prison.

Police arrested him in June 2010 after he opened a FedEx parcel mailed to him at his Wahiawa apartment from the mainland. Police had intercepted the parcel at Honolulu Airport, removed 183.4 grams of methamphetamine and replaced it with a substance that resembles the drug.