On 4 Dec 2017 at 7:27am Billy wrote:
I see that Maria Caulfield is a step closer to banning the use of mobile phones by prisoners. Apparently, at the moment it is very difficult to prevent them being smuggled in. Can anyone explain how the system is so lax that someone who is locked up and isolated from the outside world can obtain a new phone?
On 4 Dec 2017 at 9:33am endoftheouse wrote:
In my day a PP9 Battery in a sock was all you needed to get you through a bit of stir or a cup of hot water mixed with sugar which was equally as good to solve arguments. What goes on in the Peter stays in the Peter.
On 4 Dec 2017 at 9:47am Earl of Lewess wrote:
I know they use to conceal them in a place where the sun never shines, but while I can just about imagine achieving this with a compact 2002 Nokia and a jar of Vaseline, surely nobody can get a Samsung 8 up there? But there is no end to the ingenuity of the criminal classes. In Lewes prison, they used their radiators to distill an alcoholic hooch from orange peel.
On 4 Dec 2017 at 11:21am Erp wrote:
What's the going rate for droning a phone in to prison? There must be a high attrition rate due to signal loss and general cock up factor. Hardly seems worth it unless you're getting a couple of grand?
On 4 Dec 2017 at 12:15pm Bob wrote:
As a regular at Lewes prison (visiting not inmate!), given the security that I have to go through to get in I'd be extremely surprised if a visitor was able to smuggle a phone in. An underpaid overworked warden however... :/
On 4 Dec 2017 at 1:47pm Billy wrote:
Have prisons gone soft? Surely they don't allow face to face physical contact between visitors and inmates?
On 4 Dec 2017 at 2:43pm Cell block H wrote:
I have always wondered why they don't jam the signal in prisons. They could easily get exemptions from the laws that stop cinemas and even schools doing it and it would close off another risk.
On 4 Dec 2017 at 3:54pm Fairmeadow wrote:
I think it is like the advertised parental control systems. Fine in theory. In practice the inmates are always several technical steps ahead of the staff.
With today's staffing levels, the staff can only run prisons with the consent of the prisoners. Lots of them are ordinary guys with problems, but get very agitated when denied the drugs, alcohol, tobacco, support, etc on which they rely. A minority are genuinely intimidating characters you might very well think twice about saying no to.
On 4 Dec 2017 at 4:22pm @Cell block H wrote:
It doesn't take a genius to answer that.... It's illegal and could earn you 2 years in prison.
Unfortunately jammers are not selective, it would need to be sufficiently powerful to work, which would result in part of the surrounding area being jammed too, it would block mobile, WiFi and most radio frequencies.
And no you couldn't get exemptions from the law, no one is exempt from the law...
On 4 Dec 2017 at 5:27pm Billy wrote:
If you stopped prisoners having access to mobile phones in the first place, it wouldn't even be necessary to consider jamming! They are prisoners for goodness sake! Everyone has gone soft.
On 4 Dec 2017 at 8:39pm We'vehadourfun wrote:
I know we have a prison Lewes but this smacks of MP looking for gains on the main stage rather than giving two hoots about her constituency. She's a fraud and maybe her number is doing the rounds in the prison....just a thought
On 8 Dec 2017 at 3:21pm Lawyer wrote:
It’s a lot harder to keep phones out of prisons than some people think. They only need to smuggle in a few handsets which are shared for a fee. Micro SIM cards are very difficult to find as they are so small. The better solution would be to allow greater access to landline calls or Skype as these can be monitored and all the stats show that prisoners who maintain relationships with family and friends have a much lower re offending rate than those who don’t.