Facebook has removed 30 prisoners’ pages after complaints that they were using the social network to harass their victims. The company on Thursday removed the pages after England’s justice secretary brought to Facebook’s attention the taunting of victims.
Prisoners in England used Facebook accounts to make threats against victims through messages to their own group of friends, according to published reports. One well-known prisoner serving time for his involvement with the mob sent messages to his 500-plus friends saying he could not wait to see the fear in some of his enemies’ eyes.
Access to social networks by inmates serving time is against prison policy, according to the Ministry of Justice.
With that knowledge, Facebook removed the pages within 48 hours of being notified, according to England’s Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor Jack Straw.
Even if the prisoners were allowed to access social networks while in prison, Facebook might have removed the pages based on its own Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which states: “You will not bully, intimidate or harass any user,” and “you will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”
Facebook asks users to notify the company of any harassment and also provides users with the option to block messages and access to their pages by other users.
The company’s removal of the pages created a storm of debate on Internet forums about the rights of prisoners. Some agree Facebook did the right thing and say Internet access is a privilege that prisoners should not have.
“Taunting victims is bad, but there’s a lot worse they could do online,” wrote a poster named Anrkist. “Even with Internet restrictions, you’d never be able to block all the bad outcomes.”
Others, however, argue that prisoners should have…