2012 Annual Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner
result prisoners had continued to be monitored for longer than the permitted period without
review. Finally in four prisons monitoring had continued after some of the authorisations had
expired due to an administrative error. These were all serious breaches of Prison Rules and /
or NSF. Red recommendations were given to these establishments to ensure they align their
authorisations to the NSF and introduce robust review processes so that monitoring does not
continue if an authorisation has expired.
44% of the recommendations fell into the amber category this year. I can report that there
were four areas where amber recommendations were prevalent across a significant number of
the prisons; Interception Risk Assessments, reviews, timeliness of the monitoring of prisoners’
telephone calls, and record keeping (monitoring logs). Amber recommendations were made in
these areas to assist the prisons to tighten their procedures and improve compliance. Each
of these areas will be discussed in the following paragraphs with the exception of the record
keeping (monitoring logs) which has already been covered earlier in this section.
“Unfortunately the Prison Service has still not managed to disseminate the
new Interception Risk Assessment template that was designed in 2011. I
reported last year that the template has been piloted at a number of prisons
and I would encourage the Prison Service to introduce this as soon as possible
to assist the prisons to achieve a better level of compliance in this area.”
My inspectors were pleased to find that the vast majority of the prisons were completing
Interception Risk Assessments for prisoners who meet the criteria for offence related monitoring;
however my inspectors concluded they were not completed to a satisfactory standard in a third
of the establishments inspected. A number of the question sets had not been properly completed
and as a result there was a lack of information in relation to the factors that had been taken into
account and risk assessed.With the lack of evidence in the risk assessments, it was difficult to see
how the Authorising Officers were able to make informed decisions as to whether monitoring
was necessary and proportionate. In addition my inspectors concluded that in a quarter of the
establishments inspected, the reviews for the monitoring authorisations (offence related and
/ or intelligence-led) did not adequately set out the reasons why it was deemed necessary to
continue or cease monitoring. Recommendations were made in these two areas to ensure that
the risk assessments and any authorisation reviews contain sufficient evidence to support the
Authorising Officers decisions to initiate, continue or cease monitoring. Unfortunately the Prison
Service has still not managed to disseminate the new Interception Risk Assessment template that
was designed in 2011. I reported last year that the template has been piloted at a number of
prisons and I would encourage the Prison Service to introduce this as soon as possible to assist
the prisons to achieve a better level of compliance in this area.
Finally, my inspectors identified that a number of the prisons were not listening to the offence
related or intelligence-led calls in a timely fashion or within the timescale outlined in the
authorisations. It is vitally important for the prisons to ensure that all calls made by prisoners
subject to offence related or intelligence-led monitoring are listened to within a timely fashion in
order to evaluate the risk or threat these prisoners pose.
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