Call to ban the mini mobiles that are smuggled into jails
TINY mobile phones designed to be smuggled into prisons should be banned from sale, the Justice Secretary has said.
Convicts buy the miniature devices – some no bigger than a lipstick tube – because they are easy to sneak behind bars.
David Lidington said the gadgets were freely available from online retailers such and bought by inmates to break prison rules.
In a major speech at a central London think-tank today, Mr Lidington will say: ‘It’s pretty clear that these miniature phones are being advertised and sold with the purpose of being smuggled. I am calling on online retailers and trading websites to take down products that are advertised to evade detection measures in prisons.’
He said the mobiles were advertised as being able to go undetected by the body orifice security scanners used in jails.
The devices can be bought for as little as £25 but change hands for up to £500 inside prisons. About 20,000 illicit phones and sim cards were recovered by guards in 2016.