Prisoners to get phones in their cells

Tuesday 19 January 2016

Prisoners are getting phones in their cells because budget cuts mean that they’re going to be locked away an hour earlier every night.

The move – announced in the Prison Board of Visitors Annual Report for 2015 – will allow prisoners at HMP La Moye to make calls at normal rates to up to 20 approved numbers.

The phones will not allow prisoners to receive calls.

The Board of Visitors is currently composed of Jurats – the judges who sentence the majority of prisoners to spells at La Moye – and they met nine times last year, making 13 additional trips to the prison.

In their annual report, the board wrote: “We are a little concerned that the consequential reduction in staffing at the Prison has led to the necessity for the prisoners to be locked in their cells an hour earlier in the evening, as from 3rd January next.

“On any view this is a retrograde step.

“As partial compensation for this, the Governor tells us, telephones will be installed in each cell, from which inmates will be able to call up to 20 approved numbers, paying normal rates.

“The telephones will not be capable of receiving incoming calls and all outgoing calls will be recorded for security purposes.”

The report also states that each inmate has their own basic computer which allows access to all free terrestrial TV channels, as well as training and educational materials.

In the report, the board has also called on Home Affairs Minister Kristina Moore to ensure that any further budget cuts do not hit the training and education that prisoners receive, as they say that for some repeat inmates it is a vital way of breaking the cycle of offending and being sent back to prison.

They said: “We express the fervent hope that budget cuts will not impinge upon the level or quality of training and education that the prisoners receive.

“It is our firmly-held view that not only is it right on a moral and social basis to receive criminals and endeavour to discharge them as citizens, citizens with skills and the hope of a future, but also that it would be morally wrong, and indeed far more expensive in the long term, to receive criminals into custody and, at the end of their sentences, to discharge them back into society as criminals.”