International Law

Outbound email service for prisoners

By John Hirst

Great news for EMAP and for prisoners!

By: Inside Time Report

After successfully introducing the email system into over fifty UK prisons, a contractual agreement with NOMS has now been formalised.

Two trials are planned to commence in January with an enhanced version of the EMAP service that will allow outbound emails (prisoners to families) and the ability to send attachments with emails inbound and outbound. The attachment facility will be a major factor for the solicitors and other organisations needing to send forms quickly for prisoners to complete.

This dramatic development follows a very positive evaluation of the service, which is a credit to Derek Jones, who designed the concept of EMAP whilst serving a prison sentence and dreamt of the day he could establish the service upon his release.

Derek told Inside Time: ?I believe we are on the verge of changing the future with regards to prisoner communication in the UK. But without the support of Inside Time and the free publicity given to the service over recent months, we would have probably taken another 3 years or more to get to this critical and exciting stage of our development.

?To get the necessary support from NOMS we had to demonstrate that we could offer a service that would be efficient, secure and ?zero cost? as far as HMPS is concerned. This is the ultimate ?win win? situation, no cost to HMPS and also cheaper and faster than the post for our customers. As the usage increases we hope to be in a position to reduce the costs to users even further We will operate on a ?not for profit? basis and support our two nominated charities, New Bridge and Prisonchat UK.?

Inside Time, having highlighted the need for such a service on numerous occasions, is delighted to have been instrumental in advancing the introduction of the system in so many prisons over recent months. Hopefully the national roll out is now very close and all prisoners will be able to benefit from easier and more frequent communication with their loved ones.

EMAP, PO BOX 4335, Frome, BA11 9AF. Telephone: 08700 429351
http://www.emailaprisoner.com

Full post as published by prisonlawinsideout on January 01, 2009 (boomark / email).