Security Worries Over Smuggled Mobiles In Prison

The number of smuggled mobile phones confiscated in prisons has risen dramatically, leading to concerns that they could be used to fuel crime and terrorism.

A total of 8,099 mobile phones or SIM cards were confiscated in prisons in England and Wales in 2008, compared to just 2,272 seized in 2006. The figure includes 388 recovered from high security jails, where terrorist suspects are usually held, up from 294 in 2006.

“These are really shocking figures,” said Baroness Neville-Jones, the shadow security minister, speaking to the Daily Telegraph. “How can the Government have done so little as the number of phones found in prisons has more than tripled?”

“In 2007 a convicted al-Qaeda supporter was caught using a mobile phone to build a website from inside a high security prison,” she added. “You would have thought that the authorities would have got their act together after that, yet there are now more mobile phones found in high security prisons than there were then. This spreads extremist ideology and is a threat to our security. The Government must tell us how they are going to deal with it.”

“We have done a vast amount to tackle this problem but like the way criminals manage to smuggle drugs into prisons they have found ways of getting mobiles into prisons,” responded Justice Secretary Jack Straw in the Telegraph.

The newspaper also quoted a Prison Service spokesman as saying the seizures demonstrated the effectiveness of prison security and intelligence work.

Earlier this month a US company developed what it called the “Bloodhound detector”, which ‘sniffs out’ and locates mobile phones being used in restricted environments. The Bloodhound detector is mainly designed for prisons, to stop prisoners getting hold of mobile phones and using them for illegal activities.

The advantage of a mobile phone detector over an installed system designed to suppress or jam all mobile phone signals, is that it will not interfere with 999 calls, public safety communications, or even normal mobile calls in permitted areas.