Reports yesterday that a prisoner on remand has been able to make hundreds of threatening social media posts whilst imprisoned makes a mockery of Victoria’s prison system.
Jay Stephens, who is currently held on remand over allegedly viciously bashing Assistant Police Commissioner Chris O’Neill last month, has had hundreds of threatening and abusive comments posted on his personal Facebook account whilst imprisoned.
This comes only months after Labor promised to make changes to prisoner phone privileges to ban inmates from using jail phones to relay information to third parties to post on social media.
Inmates being able to relay social media posts so easily from within prison is just another example of how broken and dysfunctional Victoria’s correctional system is.
Comments attributable to Shadow Minister for Corrections, David Southwick:
“When violent offenders are able to have hundreds of threatening social media messages posted from inside jail, you’ve got to wonder who is really running our prisons.
Daniel Andrews’ new rules to crack down on prisoners’ use of social media have clearly failed when violent inmates can post hundreds of abusive messages from inside prison.”