Anonymous calls for young prisoners
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Young prisoners in Scotland are to be allowed to call Crimestoppers without having their calls monitored or recorded.
Telephone calls that prisoners make are routinely monitored by the Scottish Prison Service, but an added pin number to the Crimestoppers number means that calls cannot be monitored, traced or recorded.
Due to the knowledge that the prison population is likely to have about crime, Crimestoppers wanted to offer the same guarantee of anonymity to young prisoners as it does to members of the general public, to encourage them to pass on information they may have about crime.
Mike Ewart, chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service, said: "I welcome this initiative, which I believe will be of significant help in encouraging prisoners to share information to aid in the detection and prevention of crime. We have been working very closely with partner agencies in recent years and this initiative is a logical progression of that joint working."
Crimestoppers have never before set up such a system for young prisoners.
