Prisoners watch TV for £1

[Trevortt]

Bradford's prisoners are paying just £1 a week to hire remote control television for their cells while hospital patients are being charged nearly £16 to watch from their sick beds.

More than 1,000 inmates at Armley Prison in Leeds, where the district's convicts are often sent, are believed to be eligible for the TV scheme, with just a small group barred for bad behaviour.

But while inmates are paying a nominal weekly fee, sick patients must hand over almost three times that amount every day to access a set.

Bradford Royal Infirmary uses Patientline entertainment systems, which cost £2.90 per day or £10 for five days for television, internet, radio and telephone. That means a week's usage costs £15.80. However, patients at Airedale General Hospital can watch TV free of charge with portable TVs and there are no provisions at St Luke's.

Shipley MP Philip Davies said: "What a perverse sense of priorities. I think most decent, law-abiding people would find it absolutely appauling people in prison through their own criminal activity are paying less than people in hospital trying to get better. It must be more valuable to allow patients to have TVs to cheer themselves up, and prisoners should be doing something more worthwhile."

Keighley MP Ann Cryer, who has stayed at the BRI, said she was dismayed" by the service and the cost.

She said: "The hospital is not in my constituency and my constituents do not use it but I have used the BRI as an inpatient and I thought the phone charges were excessive.

"I could afford the cost, but there will be many people who cannot afford it and it is not on. I am delighted Airedale is continuing to give its patients a free TV service."

Leeds North West Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland said: "I don't think that prisoners should be denied this service, but it cannot be right for hospital patients to pay so much more for the same thing. This situation should clearly be examined, because at the moment it appears both unbalanced and unfair."

Figures uncovered show 99 per cent of prisoners nationally are on standard or enhanced level privileges, suggesting just a handful of those incarcerated in the 1,254-capacity Armley Prison are denied access to in-cell sets for persistent bad behaviour.

Prisoners who share cells pay even less in rental fees because charges are made per set, not per person.

A Prison Service spokesman said: "Incentives schemes in which prisoners can earn additional privileges are designed to encourage prisoners to take part in the sentence planning process, which should mean that they leave prison less likely to re-offend.

"Television sets purchased for in-cell prisoner use are paid for by the weekly rental fee of 1 paid by prisoners. The average wage for a prisoner is under 10 a week. TVs can and will be removed from prisoners whose behaviour is deemed unacceptable."



Source