Yes — social calls from prison in England and Wales are recorded as a matter of course. But recording and listening are different things, and the policy that authorises the recording says in terms that it is not necessary to monitor most of these calls. Calls to a legal adviser or an organisation with confidential access are not recorded at all.
That distinction matters, and almost every explanation of this online loses it.
Recording is blanket. Listening is not.
The prison phone system is a private telecommunications system, and interception happens before a call connects to the public network. On that basis the system is configured to record all telephone calls prisoners make, other than calls to legal advisers and organisations given confidential access. The reason given for recording everything rather than targeting individuals is set out in the policy itself: illicit communications can originate from any prisoner, not only those already under suspicion, so misuse cannot be identified in advance, and blanket recording allows it to be identified afterwards. The framework makes a second argument that is easy to miss — recording everyone also protects prisoners who might otherwise be pressured into letting someone else use their phone account, since a recorded line is a poor place to run somebody else's business.
Then comes the sentence that changes how most people read all of this. Having justified recording everything, the same paragraph adds: "It is not however necessary to monitor most of these calls." Recording is automatic and applies to everyone. Someone actually listening is a separate decision, taken for a reason, applied to particular people, and it is the exception rather than the rule. The two get collapsed into one idea constantly — including by prisoners and families themselves, who often assume every conversation has an audience — and that assumption changes how people talk to each other for no good reason.
There is also a paper trail. Establishments must keep records of number checks and a full audit trail of decision-making and monitoring, stored electronically against the prisoner's intelligence profile. Monitoring is not something that happens casually, and it is not something staff can do without leaving a record that it happened.
What live monitoring can actually do
Where a call is being listened to as it happens, the framework allows communication to be restricted during the call itself, if that is judged necessary and proportionate at the time. An application form then has to be completed afterwards, before any further calls to that contact take place, and someone has to consider whether an ongoing restriction is needed.
In practice that is the mechanism behind a call ending abruptly in the rare cases where something has actually been said that concerns the prison. It is worth knowing it exists, if only because it is far less common than the explanation most families reach for first — which is almost always credit running out.
Everybody signs up to it
Prisoners are not supposed to discover any of this by accident either. On reception they sign a Communications Compact, which sets out that calls will be recorded and may be monitored. Policy requires it to be discussed thoroughly rather than handed over, with local support for anyone who may struggle to understand it — because of language, learning difficulties or age — and a simplified version exists for that purpose. They must also be shown the list of organisations with confidential access.
Nothing about a forwarding number changes any of that — only the rate.
What is not recorded
Calls to a legal adviser, and to organisations on the confidential access list, are excluded from recording.
That exclusion is not automatic in practice, and this is worth knowing. PSI 49/2011 places the onus on the prisoner to tell staff that they wish to make a legal call. A legal call dialled without doing that goes through the ordinary route. If someone is dealing with a case, an appeal or a family court matter, it is worth them checking how their establishment wants those calls set up rather than assuming.
And so is the person answering
That is what the recorded message is for. Since 25 April 2022 every call from a prison in England and Wales has started with the same announcement, and the Prisoners' Families Helpline published its exact wording when it came in:
"This call is from a person currently in a prison in England/Wales. All calls are logged and recorded and may be listened to by a member of Prison staff. If you do not wish to accept this call, please hang up now."
It runs about twenty seconds in England. In Wales it runs about forty, because it is repeated in Welsh. It plays every time, on every call, and it cannot be switched off for an individual number.
Three details from the same source are worth knowing, because they answer the questions families actually ask. Their credit is not running while it plays — the person calling is not charged until after the message finishes. Connecting a call now takes slightly longer than it used to, so stay on the line rather than assuming it has failed. And recordings are kept for a maximum of ninety days before being deleted automatically, unless a call was monitored and there is a prison security reason to keep it.
The announcement was not introduced to warn you. It exists because HMPPS has to tell everyone on the line that the call is recorded, under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 and Prison Rule 35A, after the Investigatory Powers Commissioner reported in December 2020 that the previous arrangement was not adequate.
One consequence deserves saying plainly rather than leaving people to discover it. Because the message cannot be turned off for a single number, anyone who picks up your phone will hear it — including someone who has not been told, such as a child or an older relative. The Helpline's own suggestion is that a particular adult answers first, or that everyone is told. If that is your situation, the Prisoners' Families Helpline is the right place to talk it through.
GOV.UK puts the same point in one line for families: prison staff can listen to and record most types of call, with legal calls the exception. None of it changes when the call happens, which is set by the regime rather than by policy — phone access hours differ from prison to prison for that reason.
If the cost is what shortens your calls rather than the monitoring, that is fixable.
What this means in practice
Most families adjust to it quickly, and then forget about it, which is usually fine. Two things are worth keeping in mind.
The first is that a recorded call is a poor place to sort out anything that could be misread — arrangements about money, other people's business, anything that sounds worse said out loud than it is. Not because anyone is listening, but because recordings exist and can be retrieved later if a reason arises.
The second is that this cuts both ways. The audit trail and the pre-call announcement mean nobody can plausibly claim a conversation never happened, and if you are receiving unwanted contact, the record exists.
Does a forwarding number change any of this?
No, and we want to be clear about it, because we sell one.
A landline number that forwards to your mobile changes exactly one thing: which per-minute rate the prison charges for the call. The call still originates in the prison, on the prison's system, from the prisoner's own account. It is intercepted and recorded there, before it goes anywhere near our number or yours. Nothing about the arrangement makes a call private, confidential, unmonitored or harder to trace, and any service that suggests otherwise is describing something that does not exist.
The same goes for approval. The number still has to be added to the approved contact list through the prison's normal process, the prison decides and can refuse, and HMPPS policy in fact directs prisons to restrict requests to add numbers linked to call diversion and re-routing services. What changes is the rate. Nothing else. If you want the mechanism itself rather than the monitoring, how a number gets onto the PIN phone system sets out the submission and checking process, and why a prison blocks or refuses a number covers what happens when the answer is no.
Frequently asked questions
The questions people ask about recording and monitoring.
Is every prison call listened to?
No. Almost all social calls are recorded, but policy states it is not necessary to monitor most of them. Listening is selective and has to be justified and recorded.
Are calls to a solicitor recorded?
No. Calls to legal advisers and confidential access organisations are excluded — but the prisoner has to tell staff that they wish to make a legal call.
Why do I hear a message when I answer?
It tells you the call is from a prison in England or Wales and that it is logged, recorded and may be listened to. It has played on every call since 25 April 2022, runs about twenty seconds in England and about forty in Wales, and the person calling is not charged until it finishes.
Does using a landline forwarding number stop calls being recorded?
No. Recording happens inside the prison's own system before the call reaches the public network. A forwarding number only changes the rate charged.
Being recorded is not the same as being listened to, and knowing the difference tends to take some of the strangeness out of a phone call you already find difficult.
If cost rather than privacy is what is cutting your calls short, how the landline rate works explains it, and the questions families ask first covers what it does and does not change.
The plans, and what each one includes, are here.