Prison bosses have shut down almost 160 Facebook accounts being used by dangerous criminals behind bars.
The social networking site is being updated by lags using mobile phones smuggled in. In some cases they have posted messages taunting victims and their families.
Other inmates have bragged about drug taking or contacted friends on the outside sparking fears they are using Facebook to maintain criminal empires.
Prison chiefs caught 158 cons updating Facebook profiles in just 15 months. But it’s believed this is just the tip of the iceberg with hundreds more logging on under false names without the authorities knowing.
Campaigners have reacted with fury to the revelations.
Labour’s shadow justice minister Sadiq Khan said: “Ministers need to get a grip and shut down access to Facebook. It’s an outrage prisoners are able to use it to taunt their victims, flaunt their disregard for justice and even run criminal activities.
“Jail is meant to be a punishment and not a continuation of their cosy criminal lifestyles.”
Prison bosses at HMP Haverigg, Cumbria discovered 12 accounts the most of any English jail. The figures, released under freedom of information laws, showed 11 profiles were deleted at Wealstun, West Yorkshire, in 2013 and seven more were closed down this year.
Justice secretary Chris Grayling said this was “totally unacceptable”. Prisoners’ friends and family are also barred from updating their social media sites.
However, earlier this year, Jason Bell, 22, who is serving six years for stabbing a motorist with a 12-inch knife, was found sending threatening messages from Holme House Prison, Stockton-on-Tees.
Bell threatened his victim, saying: “When I get out, they will give me a reason to put me in jail.”
Between 2009 and 2011, prison bosses discovered nearly 350 Facebook accounts. They included one run by Haverigg inmate David Wibberley, then 23, who used a mobile to access Facebook before bragging about smoking cannabis in jail.
Three years previously, Colin Gunn, then 44, was discovered on Facebook threatening enemies and corresponding with 565 “friends”.
Adam Pemberton, assistant chief executive of Victim Support, said: “This should not have happened. Criminals are neither allowed to use social networking sites nor allowed to contact their victims without permission.”
The latest MoJ figures show that 7,301 contraband phones or SIM cards were confiscated in 2012. Prison chiefs are using mobile phone blocking to jam signals within the walls while any inmates found with a mobile face longer sentences. Body scanners and metal detectors are also used.
A prison service spokesman said: “No prisoner should be in any doubt that if they break the rules they will be stripped of their privileges and may be reported to the police for further action.”
A Facebook spokesman said it will always investigate reports of prisoners breaking its rules and would shut down profiles if necessary.
The killer of 16-year-old schoolboy Ben Kinsella taunted his victim’s family on a Facebook post from inside jail.
Jade Braithwaite, 25 knifed Ben 11 times in an attack while the youngster celebrated his GCSE results. But he angered Ben’s family by boasting he was “down but not out” on the social media site.
Braithwaite even mocked up a T-shirt emblazoned with his face and the slogan Free Jade Braithwaite for his profile picture.
In 2011, Ryan Herbert, who murdered 20-year-old Sophie Lancaster in Bacup, Lancashire in 2007, was found to have sent more than 100 messages using Facebook.
Herbert sent flirtatious posts to female friends and uploaded pictures of himself with other inmates in the prison gym.
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