£1m jamming system to block use of mobiles in jails
JAIL chiefs have signed a £1million deal to jam mobile phone signals behind bars.
The Scottish Prison Service wants to stop criminals running their empires, or harassing their victims, on handsets smuggled into their cells.
Now the SPS has splashed out £ 44,178 on two pilot schemes at HMP Shotts in Lanarkshire and Glenochil in Clackmannanshire.
If successful, the technology, which blocks wireless signals, could be used elsewhere.
But the scheme has raised questions about whether neighbouring families will lose their mobile phone signals too. Legislation tabled at Holyrood will allow the scheme to begin next month.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill visited high-security Shotts yesterday to see English company Cobham TCS begin work on installing the jammers.
He said: ‘This Government made it a criminal offence for a prisoner to possess a mobile phone and the SPS has already invested considerably in technology and intelligence capability to detect and prevent the use of mobile phones in our prisons. This new legislation will allow it to further extend its technology to disrupt [their] use.’
SPS chief executive Colin McConnell added: ‘We will do everything we can to make the use of such devices impossible.’
In 2005, SPS chiefs spent £10,000 on scanners which could alert officers to phones being used. But criminals were still managing to evade capture and, in 2010, a new criminal offence was introduced which has seen 1 people jailed for possession of a handset behind bars, or attempting to smuggle one in. When the SPS gave evidence to the justice committee in 2012, it could not say definitively that people living near prisons would not be affected by the jamming.
Its evidence read: ‘Some factors are outwith our control. For example, if a mobile network operator erects a mast nearby, it might push the interference outwith the boundary.
‘Ofcom, the regulator, and the mobile network operators have been monitoring the situation down south, and it is encouraging that they have had no complaints from the public about any impact outside prisons.’
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