Bottom scanners to be introduced in prisons

Prisons are set to introduce bottom scanners in an attempt to stop prisoners smuggling mobile phones into jail.

The £6,500 chairs are being put in 102 jails across Britain aimed to tackle a surge in phone smuggling.

Prisoners will have to sit on the chairs, called Body Orifice Security Scanners (Boss), which bleep if they have a phone hidden inside them. They are then scanned in a non-intrusive manner and can also be used to detect drugs and weapons.



The mobile Boss chairs have three sensitive sensors which can detect metal items as small as a pin.

Resembling an electric chair, they have a metal detector on the seat and audio and visual alarms are activated when metal is carried into the magnetic field. The person being screened positions their chin near the oral sensor and then sits momentarily in the chair. The entire procedure takes a few seconds.

So far two of the Boss devices have helped detect 21 mobile phones in just months at Woodhill prison, in Milton Keynes.