Facebook bans 30 prisoners for taunting victims

The Justice Secretary today announced that the Facebook pages of 30 prisoners had been taken down after complaints from two London families that the site was being used to taunt victims.

Jack Straw said the Government was looking at introducing rules that would prevent inmates from accessing web pages.

His intervention follows a meeting with Margaret and Barry Mizen, the parents of teenager Jimmy who was murdered in south-east London in May 2008, and Richard Taylor, the father of 10-year-old Damilola, who was killed on a Peckham estate in 2001.

During the meeting, Mr Mizen warned that killer Jake Fahri had used Facebook and Twitter to post bullying and offensive comments about his son and that other families were facing similar problems.

In response, Mr Straw, who also met officials from the regulator Ofcom and Facebook announced that it had agreed to remove the offending sites and promised further action.

Mr Straw said: "We've made requests for the removal of 30 sites and they've responded to do that positively, with no single refusal, within 48 hours, so we just want to push this forward.

"We're looking at other ways in which we can raise the stakes against prisoners who seek to use these sites. It's unlawful, it's against prison rules which is the law."

Mr Straw said one option would be to change parole rules "to make it explicit that even if they're outside prison, but if they are on licence, they can't make use of sites in this way".

In one case, Jade Braithwaite, 20, who was jailed for killing 16-year-old Ben Kinsella in Islington, used Facebook to boast that he was "down but not out".