Source: Morning Star, Date: 30 December 2009

The rapid growth in mobile phone use in prisons is as dangerous as giving inmates firearms and puts prisoners, the public and prison staff in danger, the Prison Officers Association (POA) has warned.

The union blamed government “penny pinching” and a lack of will by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) for an astonishing 350 per cent rise in the number of phones and SIM cards confiscated in prisons since 2006.

Of the 8,099 items confiscated in 2008, 388 were found in high-security prisons – nearly double the number found two years ago.

And the provision of mobile phones in prisons has become a highly lucrative industry in its own right with inmates reportedly paying thousands to borrow a device.


Tory security spokeswoman Baroness Neville-Jones seized the opportunity to stoke fears that mobile phones in prisons are facilitating terrorist activity.

She said: “In 2007 a convicted al-Qaida supporter was caught using a mobile phone to build a website from inside a high-security prison.

“You would have thought that the authorities would have got their act together after that, yet there are now more mobile phones found in high-security prisons than there were then.

“This spreads extremist ideology and is a threat to our security.”

But Justice Secretary Jack Straw hit back and accused the Tories of “cheap propaganda” to grab headlines.

“Instead, the Tories need to say which bits of our strategy they disagree with, what more they would do and how they would fund any extra measures as a result,” he said.

But the POA said a simple solution has been available for some time in mobile phone jamming equipment.

The “jammers” have drawn strong resistance by mobile phone networks which claim the technology would hinder their service, even though they have been successfully adopted in several countries including France.

POA national secretary Colin Moses urged the government to stop “penny pinching” and move immediately to eradicate mobile phones from prisons.

He said: “Mobile phones in prison are as dangerous as firearms.

“And the reduction in search policies is a cost-cutting exercise by NOMS which puts everyone in danger.

“Mobile phones could be blocked with the correct investment and with a tightening of searching in and out of prisons.”