Mobile phone jamming technology to go live in Scottish prisons

An advanced technology designed to block mobile phone signals is set to be switched on across Scottish prisons over the next few weeks, a media news report on this topic has recently revealed.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has announced that the move follows the passing of legislation allowing the Scottish Prison Service to interfere with mobile phone signals, thus granting prison authorities more power to detect and prevent prisoners' use of contraband phones.

The SPS (Scottish Prison Service) has decided to implement this technology in 2 pilot sites at first, namely HMPs Shotts and Glenochil, with the two locations expected to go live by the end of the current financial year.

Possession of a mobile phone prisoners has been illegal since 2010, but even so, the SPS revealed that a number of 1,988 mobile phone handsets had been detected in Scottish prisons since 2011 — 212 of them in HMP Shotts alone.

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