Scotland city Holytown record 2020 Mobile Love BLOCK target Assurant Scotland city Holytown

Landlines to replace mobile phones in Scots prisons after devices used to arrange gangland crimes

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dailyrecord.co.uk

Prisoners are to get landlines in their cells instead of mobile phones which were used to arrange gangland crimes.Handsets were handed out to inmates to keep them connected with loved ones during the pandemic.But they were abused by thousands of cons who inserted illicit sim cards to make clandestine calls.The SPS and Scottish Government confirmed the controversial taxpayer-funded phones are being “phased out” and will be recovered from inmates in the coming months.But a multi-million pound programme of installing landlines for cons will be rolled out, after prison chiefs found jail phones brought benefits such as improved prisoner behaviour.Opposition MSPs yesterday called for the full cost of the landline roll-out to be revealed and demanded assurances the new system will not repeat “serious past mistakes” with mobile phones.The mobile scheme handed thousands of devices to ­prisoners in 2020, with limited call minutes and text and internet usage blocked on the prison-approved numbers.

But ­smuggled sims allowed these restrictions to be bypassed.In March it was revealed Scottish cons had misused the devices more than 7000 times.Last year, jurors heard how Robert Warnock, 26, helped arrange a Greenock firebomb murder plot targeting rivals from his cell by taking ­advantage of a prison handset while banged up for attempted murder.

Six men involved in the plot were jailed for a total of 64 years in November.Scotland’s youngest ever female killer had four months added to her life sentence in October over mobile phone cards stashed in her cell at Polmont young offenders’ institution, near Falkirk.Jolene Doherty, 22, is serving a minimum 17 years for knifing Conner Cowper, 18, in ­Holytown, Lanarkshire, in 2018.Meanwhile,

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