should be a privilege, not a right. So how do some prisoners manage to torment their victims by using their phones?
This is more than mere curiosity on my part. The report in this morning's paper included the case of a man who tormented his partner while in prison and then, on release, took his very young child away murdered her and then committed suicide.
It was an appalling incident that has left someone I very briefly met in a state of severe anxiety and depression. I am not sure what the relationship between her and the man's partner is. It is none of my business. All I can say is that you would never recover from something like that.
In "Midnight and Blue" Ian Rankin has Rebus in prison and using a hidden mobile phone belonging to another prisoner. It is of course the only way the plot can move forward. At the time of reading the book (which I thoroughly enjoyed) I wondered how easy it would be for perpetrators of domestic violence to continue tormenting their victims while behind bars.
It seems it is all too easy. Prisoners can apparently simply give their victim a false name, put their victims on another inmate's call list or use a third party to communicate with them. Some will even use children to communicate with them. As long as they have a means of communication they can continue to harass them and put pressure on them to drop charges of abuse and violence.
When I was still at school I had a teacher I grew to know well. On leaving school I remained in contact with her. She was past retiring age but still teaching part time. She needed the money because she had left a violent and abusive relationship. There was no no-fault divorce back then. Getting a divorce was a difficult and messy process and she had never been able to do it. Her husband lived in another state and, forty years after leaving him, she was still looking over her shoulder and moving house on a regular basis. He was still harassing and threatening her whenever he found her.
This woman had a son who was very protective of her. He did what he could but twice in the time I knew her she had to leave her home in fear. This man was "smart". I cannot say intelligent because intelligent people do not behave the way he did. He was "smart" though because he knew exactly how much he could do to harm her and get away with it. Their son once told me, "I wish Dad was inside and not able to communicate with anyone."
It would not have worked that way of course. Even before the invention of a mobile phone some men found ways to harass the partners they had abused and lashed out at.
Of course there is also the problem that so many victims believe they are the people in the wrong. "He really does love me..." is a statement which has been uttered too many times in an absolute belief that the perpetrator really does love the victim.
There is no chance we will see a situation where prisoners are not permitted to have any phone calls at all. Not all phone calls can be monitored either. Prisoners will still have illegal access to some mobile phones too.
But perhaps there are things which could be done. All the possible solutions to reduce the risk I can think of would undoubtedly seem unduly harsh. The idea that anyone caught making an unauthorised phone would have their sentence automatically doubled would not go down well. Using a child for the purposes of harassment and abuse could perhaps result in no contact with the child. Yes, hard on a child who believes they love their parent but the very fact their parent is in prison is hard. Monitored and recorded video calls so that the victim of abuse knows who is calling and a third party cannot be used might work for some. Loss of all visiting privileges would be hard and not help rehabilitation but perhaps it might prevent some of the worst abuse. And perhaps all calls should be recorded apart from those to their legal advisers?
But those who want to leave their partners and start afresh somewhere else are going to find it much harder than before. There is too much information out there for that to be easy. It was not easy before, It is much harder now