Hello,
Welcome to another blog post / rant this time about HMP Wandsworth.
Wandsworth prison or HMP wandsworth as its also know by is one of the UK’s largest prisons housing around 1800 prisoners in the London borough of Wandsworth.
Here’s its official page, Wandsworth Prison
With a prison of such a size you would think the government would ensure that the right number of staff are on hand to manage such a huge collection of prisoners who are either on remand or awaiting transfer to the prison in which they will serve their sentence.
HOWEVER….
In the news this week ( the mail online ) it has been reported that a prisoner who despite being locked up at HMP Wandsworth was still able to import machine guns using Parcelforce and sell them in the UK all from his prison cell.
HOW?
Alexander Mullings (the prisoner in question) was able to do all of this using an illegal mobile phone that had been smuggled into the prison, I’ve blogged about mobile phones in prison before (here’s a link )
Unfortunately mobile phones are a huge commodity inside of prison and HMP Wandsworth is no different, Phones trade between prisoners for a reported £600 a piece and with that kind of money on offer underpaid prison staff are sometimes tempted to aid in bringing them in.
This has been proven with the case not long ago in HMP Featherstone.
(Again i’ve written a blog so take a read)
Sadly their are three types of prisoners that may decide to use illegal mobile phones and risk a further two years added onto their prison sentence in my opinion and they are as follows,
1. Prisoners such as Mr Mullings who use the mobile phones to continue criminal activity.
2. Prisoners such as the ones seen recently on a channel 4 documentary that use the smuggled in mobiles to taunt their victims by posting pictures and posting on social media sites
3. Prisoners that are forced to take the risk due to the extortionate cost of prison phone calls from the PINs phones provided by the prison. (take a look at my last blog here to see the cost of calls made from a prison pay phone)
We can obviously do things to avoid mobile phones being smuggled into prison such as giving prison officers a fair wage for the important and sometimes dangerous work they are doing.
Also by implementing the mobile phone detection system they are currently using at prisons in Scotland that detect and block mobile phone signals that originate from the prison grounds.
and lastly by promoting services such as Prison Phone that make the calls made from the prison pay phones to mobile phones much more affordable thus stopping the need for illegal mobile phones.
If you want the full story about the machine gun dealer who’s address at the time was HMP wandsworth then here it is!
Prisoner used parcel force to import deadly machine guns
As always just my personal opinion
stay safe
x Claire x
