Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to ensure that the use of coronavirus as a weapon is treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
It is vital that offenders using coronavirus to threaten others during this pandemic face the full force of the law.
Such behaviour is an assault and where this is directed at an emergency worker we have recently doubled the maximum penalty for assault from 6 to 12 months’ imprisonment. We have already seen significant sentences imposed on those using coronavirus as a threat.
Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for our independent Courts. On 8 April 2020, the Sentencing Council also published interim guidance for sentencers in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The interim guidance clarifies that, when sentencing common assault offences involving threats or activity relating to transmission of Covid-19, courts should treat this as an aggravating feature of the offence, meaning a more severe penalty could be imposed than would have been the case absent the aggravating factor (subject always to the maximum penalty for the offence).
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to ensure that inmates found to have used social media in prison are punished appropriately.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
We do not tolerate the use of mobile phones in our prisons and will seek to punish those responsible.
The Prison Service’s Digital Media Investigations Unit (DMIU) works with prisons to identify offenders accessing websites and shuts these down quickly. In 2019, 387 social media profiles were removed.
Prisoners found guilty of using phones or other devices to upload information to social media websites can face punishments including prosecution in court which can result in sentences of up to two years’ further imprisonment.
We are investing an extra £100 million across the prison estate to fund additional staff, X-ray body scanners, baggage scanners and drug detection technology at prison gates, so that we can stop phones from entering prisons. The same investment will fund cutting-edge phone detection and blocking technology so that we can stop phones that do enter from working, or detect and retrieve them. Additionally, we are building a new digital forensics facility, which will enhance our capability to exploit intelligence from seized phones.