It shouldn’t come as a surprise, really, that mobile phones are becoming an increasing concern among those tasked with policing prison populations. Smuggled in cellulars are being linked to all sorts of decidedly less benign contraband, including drugs, guns and the like.
As the Ministry of Justice notes in a release issued today, around 15,000 mobile phones and SIMs were recovered in jails around the UK last year – but those are just the devices that were found. Up to now, law enforcement hasn’t been able to do much with those that have managed to fly under the radar.
Thanks to new rules developed through 2015’s Serious Crime act, however, prison employees and cops will now be able to cut potential prisoner phone usage off at the pass remotely by reporting suspected illicit numbers to the courts for a Telecommunications Restriction Order. Those numbers will then be added to a blacklist by mobile networks, rendering them useless.
via Engadget