Jail time for inmate who had Nokia phone in Bicester prison

Kayden Williams, 19, was on remand and standing trial for punching a teen girl in the face in Reading when prison guards at HMP Bullingdon, near Bicester, found the small ‘brick’ phone on February 22.

Only the teen’s cellmate was in the two-bunk cell at the time, as Williams had been taken to court.

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On Monday (September 18), Oxford Crown Court was told that the defendant initially denied that the phone belonged to him when he was interviewed about the matter by a police officer.

That was despite there being numbers of family members and friends in the contact lists and messages. None of the numbers in the phone related to his cellmate’s loved ones.

Williams tried to claim that he was being made to hold the phone for someone else, who he refused to name as he was ‘not a snitch’. He had come under pressure as a result of a £200 debt he owed in the world outside the prison, it was said.

The court heard that Williams was jailed for four-and-a-half years in March for causing grievous bodily harm.

A judge at Reading Crown Court handed him the hefty jail time after he was convicted of attacking two teenage girls in Coronation Square, Reading, in August 2022.

The younger girl, who was 15 at the time, suffered a broken eye socket that saw her kept in hospital for a week after the attack.

The assault was said to have been prompted by a fatal crash in Tilehurst earlier that day, with feelings running high.

Williams, formerly of Don Close, Tilehurst, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing before a court in Oxford to possession of the contraband mobile phone in prison.

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He was not in the dock for his sentencing hearing on Monday, having refused to leave his cell at West London’s Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution.

In mitigation, defence counsel Laura Hoyano asked the judge to bear in mind that an administrative cock-up at HMP Bullingdon meant the defendant had not faced an internal disciplinary hearing for having the phone.

Instead, he was interviewed under caution by the police and charged.

The phone had been used to speak to family and friends.

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There was no evidence of it being used to commit crime, it was said.

Judge Michael Gledhill KC gave the absent Williams an eight month sentence.

The term will be served on top of – or consecutively – to the jail time he is currently serving.