Facebook and the Ministry of Justice have been urged to take action after inmates used social media to identify prison officers and post videos of violent threats, bullying and drug use.

Footage on one Instagram account shows a bare-chested prisoner brandishing an improvised knife, while another clip features an inmate – apparently high – shaking and dancing uncontrollably as another films and laughs.

Asked repeatedly what he is doing, the shaking prisoner can only reply “I don’t know”.

It is not clear whether the footage is uploaded directly by prisoners or filmed and sent to contacts on the outside who run the account.

Many videos feature violence against “ketheads” or “smackheads”, and a recent Instagram Story post appears to identify a prison officer’s social media account, showing a screenshot of a different account with the words “SCREW” – a slang term for a guard – pasted over the image.

An Instagram account shows prisoner in British jails
One Instagram account featuring images and videos filmed inside UK prisons (PA)

Another post on a separate Facebook page calls on people to “name and shame” the “worst screw” they met while incarcerated. Dozens of comments give the names of the staff members and the prison where they work below.

The Facebook page, which has 15,000 followers, posts multiple times a day. Recent videos include one prisoner eating cockroaches in return for a joint of the drug “spice”, and others show alleged drug addicts agreeing to climb into a clothes dryer for the amusement of fellow inmates.

Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the POA union for prison officers, said mobile phones cause “misery, violence and deaths” across UK jails which he said are not equipped to deal with the problem.

“It doesn’t surprise me there’s an increasing number of mobile phones, weapons and drugs in our jails simply because we haven’t got the resources to stop them coming in,” he added.

When it comes to social media use, especially posts identifying prison staff, Mr Fairhurst said “the responsibility lies with Facebook”, which owns Instagram and “shouldn’t allow things like that on their sites”.

A screenshot from an Instagram Story shows a social media account with screw written over the image
One of the accounts appears to share the social media profile of a prison officer (PA)

A public Instagram account posting videos from prison appears to have been removed since Facebook was approached for comment, but a private Instagram account and a Facebook page remain active.

A spokeswoman for Facebook and Instagram said they were investigating the accounts that had been flagged up to them.

She said: “We have well-established processes with law enforcement and the Ministry of Justice to help us tackle this kind of activity.

“When we are notified of active accounts being used from prison, we comply with legal orders to ban access. We also remove prisoner accounts that violate our community standards when they are proactively identified by our technology or reported to us.”

Mr Fairhurst added that staff at the Ministry of Justice should “immediately react” to ensure Facebook removes such material, but ultimately prison staff need the resources to combat such behaviour and “stop it at its source”.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “This behaviour is unacceptable and we are working quickly to get these accounts taken down. Anyone found behaving this way can expect to spend significantly longer behind bars.”

Mobile phones can cost “between £1,000 and £2,000” once smuggled into a prison, Mr Fairhurst said, so are largely controlled by “kingpins” who rent them to other prisoners or force younger or weaker inmates to hide them as contraband.

“We need searches at the gate similar to what you experience at airports, we need search teams back for random searches in cells and technology in prisons to block mobile phone signals,” he added.

A graph shows the numebr of prison officers in 2018 compared to previous years back to 2010
The number of prison officers in England and Wales has increased this year (PA Graphics)

The number of prison officers rose this year, although numbers have not returned to the level of 2010, despite the prison population increasing.

The MoJ announced £40 million in new funding packages for prisons over the summer, including £6 million for security measures like scanners and £10 million for the “10 Prisons Project” tackling the UK’s “most challenging” prisons.

Last year, £2 million was promised to invest in hand-held mobile phone detectors and “portable detection poles” to find illegal phones.

Speaking of the 10 Prisons Project, Mr Fairhurst said: “Ten isn’t enough, it needs to be in every prison as [mobile phones] cause misery, they cause violence, they cause deaths and they compromise staff safety.”