If you’re getting arrested, try and get arrested in England or Wales

If you were looking to get arrested for something you might not have given much thought to whether you would prefer to spend time in a Scottish prison, a Welsh prison or an English prison.� You may have clumped them together as being one and the same – but now they are very different!

If you find yourself locked up in either a Welsh or an English prison then you will get a nice treat as you will be forking out fewer pennies than prisoners in Scottish prisons.

After strong campaigns from both the Prison Reform Trust and the National Consumer Council to Ofcom, calls to landlines from prisons in England and Wales are no a penny cheaper – prisoners are now able to make the calls for a mere 10p a minute.

Calls to mobiles have seen a drastic cut from 63p a minute to only 37.5p a minute.� Furthermore the minimum charge to use prison payphones has been cut by 75 per cent from 40p down to 10p.

Cheaper calls reduce crime rates

In a statement from the director of Prison Reform Trust, Juliet Lyon, the importance of contact with family and friends is vital support for prisoners and cheaper calls makes access to that support easier.

“The high cost of prison phone calls has made family contact much harder, even though family support is a lifeline for some prisoners and those who do keep in touch are less likely to reoffend,” said Lyon.

“The Prison Reform Trust is pleased that BT has now started to reduce the prohibitively high cost of prison phone calls both to landlines and to mobiles in particular. We expect costs to fall further, bringing them in line with public payphones, after the forthcoming competitive tendering process for the prison payphone contract,” Lyon continued.

BT aren’t against the move, either, as they claim that calls made from prison are actually cheaper than those made from public phones, on average.

Save money and stay out of trouble at the same time

The main message that the Prison Reform Trust wants to portray is that prisoners need support when behind bars as they are more likely to stay out of trouble in the future if they know there is support on the outside.

“Research suggests that prisoners are six times less likely to reoffend if they have a supportive family network to return to when they come out, and that almost half of people in prison lose contact with their families during their sentence,” said Lyon.

And for our friends in the North?� Apparently talks are still on going as to whether Scottish prisons will start seeing benefits – still at least some prisoners in Britain are getting the most from their BT connection.

What about you?

Do you agree with the move to lower the rates of phone calls for prisoners?� Do you think more action needs to be taken?� Leave us a comment and let us know…