Report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner - July 2016
Points of Note
Prisons
We continue to provide non-statutory oversight of the interception of
communications in prisons in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Our understanding is that the Government intends to place our oversight on a
statutory footing under the Investigatory Powers Bill (IP Bill). However this function
appears at present to be omitted from the oversight clauses in the IP Bill. Curiously
the IP Bill clauses do however include two new areas of oversight in prisons which
we have not yet started to undertake (relating to the Prisons (Interference with
Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2012 and section 80 of the Serious Crime Act 2015). We
recommend this is remedied by an amendment to clause 205 of the IP Bill.
In 2014 we conducted 74 prison inspections. 409 recommendations emanated from
those inspections, an average of 5.5 recommendations for each prison.
87% of the recommendations fell into two key categories: the procedures for the
monitoring of prisoners telephone calls and mail, and prisoner induction and
awareness of the monitoring procedures.
The overall proportion of prisons achieving a good level of compliance has remained
fairly static in the last 3 years. However, it should be noted that comparisons with
previous years are difficult because the prisons being inspected are not the same. A
more reliable way is to compare each prison’s level of compliance to their previous
inspection. In 2015 45 prisons maintained the same level of compliance (of which
39 were ‘good’), 16 improved and 13 worsened. 87% of prisons inspected that
received recommendations in their previous inspection had fully achieved all or the
majority of those recommendations.
After many years in development we were pleased that recently (in July 2016) the
National Offender Management Service (NOMS) issued an interception Prison
Service Instruction (PSI) (04/2016). Regrettably the PSI does not consolidate all
other PSIs that relate (in part) to the interception of prisoners communications.
This in our view is a missed opportunity to streamline the policy in this area and
provide much needed clarity. It does however represent a welcome step forward
in a number of areas.
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