80 Facebook sites run by prisoners shut down

PRISON bosses shut down 80 Facebook accounts being run by inmates using mobile phones smuggled into Scotland’s jails last year.

Officials i nvestigated 118 allegations that prisoners were running accounts on the social networking site, figures show.

A total of 250 pages have been shut down since the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) instigated a Facebook crackdown in November 2010.

The sites are mainly operated using smartphones and have been used by inmates to taunt victims or contact fellow criminals.

The l atest figures, released under freedom of information legislation, show Shotts high-security prison in Lanarkshire had the highest number of prisoners using Facebook last year. Investi-

‘Terrorise their victims’

gations were begun i nto 27 accounts and 21 were shut down.

At Aberdeen prison, 15 pages were investigated and 14 pages were closed.

Only Cornton Vale, near Stirling, Scotland’s only women’s prison, had no Facebook sites shut down last year.

Mobile phone blocking technology costing £1million was introduced last month at Shotts and Glenochil, in Clackmannanshire.

Scottish Tory chief whip John Lamont called for the equipment to be rolled out across Scotland to tackle the Facebook problem.

He said: ‘It’s entirely wrong that convicts can have the ability to terrorise their victims f rom behind bars.’

Laws introduced in 2010 mean inmates caught with a mobile phone can have up to two years added to their sentence.

An SPS spokesman said: ‘ The possession of a mobile phone in prison is a criminal offence. SPS makes use of all legal powers to address the problem.’