Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-06-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what powers his Department has to block access to social media sites for people awaiting sentencing.

Andrew Selous

An extensive programme of work is underway to prevent prisoners having access to mobile phones. As the Prime Minister said on 8 February 2016, we are working with the mobile network operators to challenge them to do more, including developing new technological solutions, so we can block mobile phones’ signals in prisons.

Although there are no rules to prevent prisoners on remand from passing on passwords for social media platforms, prisoners, including those on remand in custody, are not allowed access to social media platforms either directly or via a third party.

It is a criminal offence for a person to take or transmit any image or sound from within a prison and send it outside the prison and where a link between a prisoner and content posted on social media is identified, the case will be referred to the police. A sentence of up to two years can be given if those charged are found guilty. If the police decide not to pursue a criminal investigation, a prisoner can be punished under the prison disciplinary system, for example, by having privileges removed or additional days added to their time in prison.