PRISON bosses shut down 80 Facebook accounts being run by inmates on mobile phones smuggled into Scotland's jails last year.
Officials probed 118 allegations prisoners were running accounts on the social-networking site from behind bars. A total of 250 pages have been shut down since the Scottish Prison Service began a Facebook crackdown in November 2010.
The sites are mainly run from inside jails using smartphones and have been used by convicts to taunt victims or contact fellow criminals.
The latest figures, released under freedom of information legislation, show Shotts high-security prison in Lanarkshire had the highest number of prisoners using Facebook last year.
Investigations were launched into 27 accounts with 21 being shut down.
Mobile phone blocking technology was introduced last month at Shotts and Glenochil in Clackmannanshire.
A Scottish Prison Service spokesman said: "The possession of a mobile phone in prison is a criminal offence."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article