Prison cells to have landline phones installed in £8.5m project

Landline phones will be installed in prison cells for the first time, the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has confirmed.

SPS said the move will support family contact, mental health and wellbeing as well as reducing the risk of reoffending.

The scheme will cost £8.5 million and people in custody will receive 200 free minutes per month.

Maintaining contact with friends and family, particularly children is crucial to prisoners and their loved ones, the prison service said.

Landline phones will replace prison-issued phones which were distributed during the pandemic.

But North East Scotland MSP Tess White said the Scottish Government must ensure the new phones are tamper-proof after 373 mobile phones were confiscated from prisoners at HMP Grampian between January 2022 and June 20 this year.

She said: “Public safety has been put at serious risk since the SNP Government issued mobile phones to prisoners and these should have been taken away from their hands long before now.

“These supposedly secure handsets were hacked within hours of the prisoners receiving them and have continued to be abused on an industrial scale to commission serious crimes across the north east.

“It’s vital these dangerous mistakes aren’t repeated and proper security measures are installed on these landlines to ensure they aren’t used by potential drug dealers to run their businesses from their cells at HMP Grampian.”

SPS say the hard-wired, in-cell telephones will be subject to robust security which means inmates will only be able to call numbers from a pre-approved list.

Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, Angela Constance, said: “The introduction of landline telephones in cells is a welcome development by the Scottish Prison Service and marks a continuation of Scottish Government investment in modernising our prison estate.

“This will help people in custody maintain contact with friends and family, including their children, which we know is crucial to their rehabilitative journey.

“It will also pave the way for in-cell education and give people in custody greater responsibility for their own lives – and will help ensure safe and stable prison environments.”

Teresa Medhurst, chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service, said: “This is an important milestone for the Scottish Prison Service, which has the potential to deliver tangible and enduring benefits for those in our care and their families, staff, the wider justice sector, and Scotland as a whole.

“It is an example of how the SPS is taking the lessons learned in the extremely challenging circumstances of the Covid pandemic to improve the service we provide.

“I would like to thank all those colleagues who have worked so hard to deliver this.”