Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 19 June 2014 to Question 200962, on mobile telephones, how many mobile telephones and SIM cards were found in each prison in England and Wales in 2013.

The number of finds in each prison establishment for the calendar year 2013 is shown in the table below. Please note that one find may constitute a handset containing one SIM card or media card, a handset only, or a SIM card only.

This Government is clamping down on the use of mobile phones in prisons, and seizures have increased. Prisons use a comprehensive range of robust searching and security measures to detect items of contraband such intelligence-led searches, body searches, use of x-ray machines, metal detectors and CCTV surveillance cameras, as well as body orifice scanners.

The Offender Management Act 2007 made it a criminal offence to convey specific items, including mobile phones and associated equipment into or out of a prison or to transmit sounds or images from within a prison. In March 2012, the Crime and Security Act 2010 also made it an offence, with a penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine, to possess an unauthorised mobile phone or other electronic equipment or component element that can receive or transmit information electronically within a prison.

All figures in this answer have been drawn from live administrative data systems which may be amended at any time. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. The data are not subject to audit.