A prison near York has tightened its controls on prisoners making phone calls after one managed to phone a domestic abuse complainant hundreds of times.
Like most men remanded in custody or given prison sentences by York and Scarborough courts, Vincent Sherwood, 48, was sent to HMP Hull earlier this year when he was charged with strangling and suffocating a woman.
York Crown Court heard earlier this week that he was able to ring the complainant in the domestic abuse case hundreds of times from the prison and persuade her to get the charges against him dropped.
The court also heard that prisoners are only allowed to call numbers that have been approved by prison officers.
Vincent Sherwood (Image: North Yorkshire Police)
Sherwood’s solicitor advocate Graham Parkin told York Crown Court: “I cannot see how the woman’s number was approved.”
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A Prison Service spokesman said: “Protecting victims is our absolute priority, and we apologise for the distress and anxiety this case will have caused.
“As soon as the prison became aware, contact was blocked. We have also since added stronger checks on prisoner calls to ensure any unwanted contact is prevented.”
York Crown Court heard earlier this week that calls made by prisoners are recorded and listened to by prison staff.
Hull Prison (Image: Google Street View)
After staff heard how Sherwood was pressurising the woman to retract her statement and coaching her in what to tell police, they forwarded transcripts of the calls to detectives and Sherwood was charged with perverting the course of justice.
He admitted the charge and was sentenced to four years in jail.
Sherwood, 48, of no fixed address, was initially locked up on remand by magistrates when they sent the domestic abuse case to York Crown Court.
He rang the woman while awaiting his first appearance at the crown court when he would have been expected to enter his plea.
The calls were made on phones in the prison provided for prisoners. It is illegal for prisoners to have mobile phones in prison.