Humza Yousaf’s botched prison phone scheme cost taxpayers £6m Former first minister gave all inmates free mobile phones during the Covid pandemic, enabling them to commit crimes while behind bars

by bar_tosz

12 comments

  1. A decision by Humza Yousaf to give all prison inmates free mobile phones cost the taxpayer £6 million before it was scrapped, it has been revealed.

    **A Scottish Prison Service (SPS) report said that lessons had been learnt from the botched scheme, after prisoners using illicit Sim cards bypassed restrictions to rack up more than 8,000 security breaches — including drug deals and the fire-bombing of family homes.**

    The equalities and human rights impact assessment report also reveals there was significant bullying of vulnerable prisoners into handing over their mobiles to other convicts.

    In 2020, Yousaf, the justice secretary at the time, gave all inmates — including murderers, paedophiles and gangsters — the use of free personal phones in response to the Covid pandemic, insisting that it would help them stay connected to their families during lockdown.

    The cost of the mobiles was about £4.1 million and an additional £1.6 million was spent boosting phone signals to give prisoners better reception.
    The impact assessment confirms that the programme caused significant security issues as they “were easily tampered with and illicit Sim cards could be swapped into them”.

    The SPS bought enough Nokia phones to give approximately 7,000 prisoners in custody two phones each before being forced to scrap the scheme last August when inmates were found to have used them to commit scores of crimes behind bars.
    The prison service was forced to recall the phones and instead installed fixed landlines in every cell, creating further costs and taking the total bill for keeping prisoners connected with friends and family to more than £12 million.

    The scheme was intended to help prisoners stay in touch with loved ones during the Covid pandemic

    The SPS decided that landlines would be less open to abuse and has noted that there had been no security issues since the new phone system was introduced.
    Sharon Dowey, the Scottish Conservative deputy justice spokeswoman, said: “Given the major issues that occurred with the SNP’s mobile phone scheme for prisoners, ministers must guarantee the same mistakes won’t happen again with in-cell landlines.

    **“The SNP squandered over £6 million of taxpayers’ money dishing out free phones to every prisoner and insisted they were tamper-proof. Instead, within hours they were hacked and used to conduct serious crimes from behind bars.**

    “Continuing a similar scheme is typical of the SNP’s weak justice agenda and will cause problems for prison staff who are bearing the brunt of SNP cuts to prison budgets. It is vital that ministers are upfront about this scheme and what robust measures are in place to stop it being abused to avoid victims paying the price yet again.”

    The impact assessment of the landlines scheme was conducted between November 2023 and April 2024 but only recently made public.
    It stated:“Although these mobile phones were seen as positive for family contact, there is intelligence to suggest that these led to bullying as other prisoners took the devices from others and some individuals were able to unlock these phones and use illegal Sim cards in them. Installing in-cell phones will mitigate the above issues, as the phones do not hold Sim cards and are wired into each cell.”

    The report rejected fears that giving prisoners access to private landlines could lead to witness or victim intimidation, insisting inmates would only be able to access pre-approved numbers. It added: “It should be noted that there are still all the safeguards in place to protect victims and witnesses by logging and recording and the ability to monitor calls from prisoners’ cells.”

    According to the assessment, evidence gathered from prisoners and families all suggested that the implementation of in-cell phones would be a positive step in supporting the maintenance of contact. It said: “Prisoners who did not have means to pay for phone credit would still be able to maintain family contact due to the free minutes added to their accounts each month. This was previously available with the mobile phone contract but not prior to this.”
    It also revealed that prisoners will not only be able to call family and friends but they will shortly be able to receive incoming calls in their cells, and prison chiefs plan on leaving the system on in the evening to enable prisoners who have families who work to make calls after lock-up.
    The assessment also stated: “Going forward it is hoped that the technology will be further developed to allow for prisoners to receive calls into their cells, from for example healthcare, which could further enhance their level of care within custody.

    “There were other benefits such as privacy, as prisoners could call from their own cell rather than from the gallery phones. By introducing free minutes, prisoners and their families did not suffer any financial burden through the use of the mobile phones.”

  2. “A Scottish Prison Service (SPS) report said that lessons had been learnt from the botched scheme, after prisoners using illicit Sim cards bypassed restrictions to rack up more than 8,000 security breaches — including drug deals and the fire-bombing of family homes.” 🙄

  4. Given that presumably visitation was heavily restricted or non-existent during covid, and conditions generally must have been very difficult, I think this was on balance a reasonable policy. Serious criminals who could smuggle in sim cards were presumably just as capable of smuggling in their own phones anyway. And £6 million is roughly 0.001% of the Scottish government’s budget, not something to get worked up about

  6. Glad he’s fading into obscurity. History certainly won’t look favourably upon himself and sturgeon.

  8. Don’t say anything slightly critical about Humza, people will call you a fascist. Also, when did we start watering down the term fascist to someone that disagrees with my political views?

  9. Humza Yousaf was a rampant racist who couldn’t hide his dislike for white Scottish people.

  11. The guy was a call center worker before sneaking into politics. He’s a low IQ racist clown. He actively made Scotland a worse country.

    For comparison – Nicola Sturgeon was a solicitor before entering politics.

  12. What a fucking stupid idea. Who supplied the phones and did they have any links to any MSPs?

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