Law Weblog

Convicts to get phones in cells

Sunday 18 September 2011 at 7:39 am | In News | 1 Comment

Phone smuggled in shoe

Prisoners could soon have telephones installed in their cells, allowing them to make calls from their beds.

Officials are searching for a suitable jail to pilot the scheme and HMP Isis, a young offenders’ institution in South East London, is believed to be the most likely choice. The prison can hold 252 inmates in single and double cells, and each cell would have a landline phone installed.

The move is intended to stamp out the illegal use of mobiles in prisons and the flourishing black market in smuggled phones. It will also end the scenes, made familiar by television dramas, of inmates queuing to use public phones on prison landings.

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1. A novel way of circumventing the ‘actual’ problem that prisoners are able to smuggle mobiles into jail in the first place, along with drugs. Those with mobile phones will probably continue to use them, whether for criminal enterprise or otherwise in preference over the likely to be monitored ones installed.
   Prisoners should have no access to phones, drugs, television, newspapers or any other media, they are there to be punished and hopefully though not likely rehabilitated.

   Comment by mike farrell — Monday 19 September 2011 4:27 pm #

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