Facebook takes down 30 prisoners' pages after victim taunts

2-12-2010 United Kingdom:

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, says the offending pages brought to the attention of Facebook had been removed within 48 hours

Thirty Facebook pages have been taken down because prisoners were using them to taunt their victims, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, has revealed.

The minister said the 30 offending pages brought to the attention of Facebook had been removed within 48 hours. Ministers were seeking to identify "better methods" of preventing the "deplorable" abuse of victims via social networking sites, he added.

Straw was speaking after a meeting with Ofcom's Chris Woolard, Facebook's European director of policy, Richard Allan, and members of Families United to talk about the issues around prisoners' access to social networking sites.

He said he was "reassured by the co-operation which we're receiving from Facebook" as he called today for a longer-term solution "to this very modern version of the old problem of victim harassment".

"It's not that people at Facebook have a different sense of morality from us," he told the BBC. "They have the same sense of morality but they have to police hundreds and thousands of their sites, so what we have to do is set up a better system with Facebook.

"So essentially if they get a notice from us that this site is improper then all they have to do is not make a judgment about it, but press the delete button. That's what we are working towards."

Straw said ministers were also looking to "raise the stakes" against prisoners who use Facebook, which is against prison rules.

Prisoners are only meant to have access to the internet for educational purposes and under close monitoring.

Straw said it might be possible to change the rules under which prisoners are freed on parole and temporary licence, to make it "explicit" that they cannot make use of sites in this way.

Ministers are also looking at ways to stop inmates using smuggled mobile phones to access webpages and abuse their victims, said the minister.

Legislation is under way to make the possession of a mobile phone in prison without authorisation a criminal offence, and body orifice scanner chairs are now located in every prison in England and Wales.

"We are getting much tougher about people smuggling telephones into prison and using them. I'm afraid we're dealing with crooks. Devious, manipulative people who actually have no respect for their own bodies so they push these mobile telephones into their body orifices."

Straw also said there is evidence that the families of some prisoners have been involved in updating sites.

Last month, it emerged that one of Britain's most notorious gangsters used Facebook to threaten his enemies while serving a 35-year sentence in a maximum security prison.

Colin Gunn, an underworld boss who helped plot the murder of two grandparents, sent messages to 565 "friends" after being transferred to a prison where he claimed officials had a relaxed attitude to social networking.

"I will be home one day and I can't wait to look into certain people's eyes and see the fear of me being there," Gunn wrote in one message, according to the Sunday Times.

Jade Braithwaite, who was convicted of killing 16-year-old Ben Kinsella, used the same website to boast he was "down but not out".

He also said he wanted a remote control so he could "mute or delete people when I need to". Facebook later took down the offending page.

Straw said today: "Facebook's rules already ban harassment and intimidation, fake profiles and the sharing of login details with anyone. They will remove profiles where it is reported to them these rules have been breached. We will not hesitate to use existing law to tackle those cases where offenders seek to taunt or harass victims and their families." ..Source.. Hélène Mulholland and agencies