Prisoners in England Were Accidentally Given the Names and Addresses of Local Schoolchildren

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Prisoners currently "doing bird" at HMP Portland in Dorset, England, were given documents bearing the names and addresses of children at a nearby school—a move many detractors (i.e. me, right now) are calling "quite a calamitous fuck-up, actually."

According to agency reports, the paperwork—taken from a recent school trip—was handed over to the prison as part of a waste management program that sees files from local schools and offices sent to prisoners to shred and turn into flammable BBQ briquettes as part of a back-to-work scheme.

Obviously a lot of the prisoners are local, so the crimes are mainly "apple scrumping" and "believing in witches," but there are reportedly a "small but significant" number of sex offenders at HMP Portland, which has quite rightly worried local parents.

Teachers at the local Portland Aldridge Community Academy notified parents of the goof last week, and an urgent investigation has been launched into how such sensitive documentation found its way into a prison, because obviously.

Despite the urgency of this investigation, parents are still a combination of shocked and mildly terrified that a letter from a new pen-pal with biro-and-a-battery face tattoos might drop through their letterbox.

"All sorts of prisoners are in there," one said, "and they had children's names and addresses—it's a real security concern. We were contacted by the school last week, and the governors have assured us [about the safety of the children on the list], but this should never have happened in the first place. Schools should not be sending any kind of paperwork to a prison, it's as simple as that."

If only someone in the bloody government would talk sense like you, mate! If only "the man" would sit up and pay attention this addresses-in-prison scandal! Maybe then we'd get something done!

Listen, I'm no expert—I've never beaten a man with a truncheon, or had an on-fire bin thrown at me, or kept men in starved isolation for a week because they sassed me once, so I don't know the nuanced and sophisticated ways in which prisons and young offenders institutes should be run—but I don't think prisoners should be literally handed access to the sensitive information of school children. Call me po-faced if you want, but I just don't agree with it.

Still, if prisoners really wanted children's names and addresses, I'm sure someone from outside could get help them out; as our pals over at Motherboard have reported, prisoners are really good at getting mobile phones into prison, and in the US they're using quadcopter drones to try and drop tasty little baggies of heroin into institutions. Facebook is even being forced to suspend prisoners' accounts because so many of them are somehow playing Candy Crush from inside the clink.

Obviously using a body cavity to stash a load of children's names and addresses seems like a bit of a waste when you could be using it to call your loved ones or get extremely high off a condom full of drugs, but you do you, prisoners. You do you.

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