PRISONERS should be given landline phones in their cells to allow them to stay in touch with relatives outside jail, according to a think-tank.
A report by Reform Scotland highlights the value of maintaining connections with family in preventing further offending by those sent to prison.
However Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary Liam Kerr described the proposal as a step too far.
Substantial evidence suggests prisoners who maintain contact with family members are less likely to re-offend. But at present, most prisoners are limited to sharing phone lines with restricted availability, or having email messages printed out and delivered along with regular post.
Reform Scotland said innovative ideas should be tried, such as in-cell telephones, which have already been provided in some prisons in England and Wales.
Research director at Reform Scotland Alison Payne said: “Prison exists for four key reasons – punishment, deterrence, public safety and rehabilitation.
“The fourth – rehabilitation – does not always receive the attention it deserves. However, rehabilitating prisoners and preventing re-offending is important not just for the prisoner, but also for his or her family and for society as a whole.
“We challenge the Scottish Prison Service and the Scottish Government to be bold and innovative as we try to close the revolving door of re-offending.”
The report also calls for a ban on prison sentences of six months or less in Scotland and an end to automatic early release for short sentences. Although the Government introduced a presumption against sentences of three months or less in 2010, they have continued to be used, Reform Scotland says, with more than 4,000 people given such sentences in 2016.
The report argues short sentences cause disproportionate damage to prisoners’ lives but offer no hope of rehabilitation, because most courses designed to help prisoners go straight take six months or more.
The idea of phones in cells was welcomed by prison reformers and charities. Nancy Loucks, chief executive of Families Outside, the charity which works to support the families of prisoners, said: “Imprisonment fractures families. It separates people from the things most likely to prevent them from offending, such as housing, employment and social support, increasing the risk of family breakdown, relapse and homelessness.”
She said more use should be made of community sentences. “Community-based measures are designed to address the reasons behind someone’s offending while maintaining their links to their communities – something short prison sentences simply cannot do.”
Lisa Mackenzie, policy adviser with the Howard League for Scotland, said: “It is in all our interests to ensure those coming out of prison are given every opportunity to turn their lives around.
“Maintaining family relationships is key to a prisoner’s successful rehabilitation on release.”
She said some prisoners did not receive regular visits in prison, while female prisoners are less likely to be visited by their children than males.
“The cost of travelling to the prison can be a factor, as can distance,” she said. “The ability to maintain contact via phone calls is therefore very important and some prisons in England have experimented with the introduction of in-cell phones. We welcome Reform Scotland’s suggestion and hope that this will be taken up by the Scottish Prison Service.”
But Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr said: “We agree rehabilitation is crucial, and maintaining a family contact for prisoners can help that process along.
“But we believe having phones installed in prison cells would be a step too far, and could jeopardise the other tenets of prison – punishment, deterrence and public safety.”
He said the idea was “worthy of debate”, but added: “The existence of mobile phones in prison causes huge headaches for jail bosses, to the extent some facilities even have signal jamming technology. It’s hard to see how that would tie in with this suggestion.”
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