Mobile phones help prisoners to commit crimes

Officials of the Prisons Service have admitted that inmates are sometimes able to illegally use mobile phones to run organised crimes from within the prisons.

But the service says the phenomenon is not limited to Ghana or Africa.

Speaking to Joy News Friday, the Public Relations Officer of the service, ASP Courage Atsem, stated that “in our searches we find some mobile phones on some of the inmates and we retrieve them…”

Police intelligence has revealed the trend is undermining their efforts to fight crime. The police say inmates are able to share information with accomplices on the run to carry out more crime and some of them even dare to threaten to take the lives of personnel who cause their arrest.

ASP Atsem who denied any knowledge of the police intelligence described the phenomenon as “quite worrying” and challenging but quickly added that “that is why we are intensifying our efforts to ensure that we reduce the practice to the barest minimum”.

In the long term, he said, the prisons administration “is contemplating adopting a technology that will even make the use of mobile phones…in the prisons not possible”.

Meanwhile criminologist Ken Attafuah who said he is not surprised at the phenomenon said “it is a reflection of the larger perennial problem of smuggling of contraband into restricted places…”

He said that regrettably, the smuggling is sometimes done by the officers themselves.

Mr Attafuah urged the prisons administration to ensure “officer integrity and professionalism” among their men.