How jail chiefs bought 2 mobiles for every inmate

SCOTTISH prison chiefs bought enough mobile phones to hand inmates two each during a botched bid to let cons stay in touch with family on the outside.

Data released under freedom of information confirmed that the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) handed out a total of 14,690 phones to almost 7,000 prisoners across its 15 jails during the Covid pandemic at a cost of more than £4million.

The scheme was scrapped last August and replaced with in-cell landlines at an additional cost of £8.1million.

It takes the total bill paid for helping prisoners to stay connected with their friends and family to more than £12million.

Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Russell Findlay said: ‘Prison officers face increasingly dangerous conditions due to SNP government failure to build new prisons and tackle rampant drug use.

‘They might well question why Humza Yousaf continues to prioritise spending even more millions of pounds on landlines after his disastrous free mobiles for prisoners were used in a drugs war and other serious crimes.’

He added: ‘This is a classic example of the SNP being completely out of touch with the people of Scotland.’

The mobile phones were handed out to all inmates with prison chiefs insisting it would help inmates stay connected with families during lockdown.

Thousands of devices were handed out with limited call time – 310 minutes – and text and internet usage blocked on the prison-approved numbers.

But illicit sim cards allowed prisoners to bypass these restrictions and rack up more than 8,000 security breaches, including drug deals and hit jobs.

After the scheme was scrapped the SPS was forced to try to recover the mobile devices, with 751 never being recovered.

Prison chiefs have now installed 7,200 in-cell telephones but refused to disclose the current running cost.

In the FOI response, the SPS said: ‘Over the course of the Covid pandemic, a total of 14,690 mobile phones were distributed to establishments.

‘However, it is important to note some of these would have been used to replace lost or damaged handsets and some would not have been distributed but held in reserve.

‘When prison-issued mobile phones were decommissioned in August following the introduction of in-cell telephony, there were 5,280 prison-issued mobile phones in use by people in our care.

‘Of those... 4,529 were returned within an agreed period by September and the remainder were then considered illicit.

‘Since September, efforts have been ongoing to recover all and any illicit handsets. We do not have a current figure of the number of prison-issued handsets recovered during this period.’

‘Completely out of touch’