Prison Law
DOZIE & CO SOLICITORS: USING INFORMATION LAW TO ADVANCE PRISONER’S RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES
Since the Data Protection Act 1998 there have been further improvements in domestic information law. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 now provides additional legal rights to obtain disclosure of information held about us by various organisations. Given that many decisions affecting prisoners are based on records and reports held on prison files, good prison law practice can ensure that prisoners are able to obtain disclosure of those records which are taken into account by decision making panels and boards.

At Dozie & Co we regularly use the legislations cited above to obtain information for our clients and if upon perusal of the files we find adverse entries, we can apply to the prison governors to correct or amend the entries. If administrative correction of information is frustrated by lack of cooperation from the prison authorities, we would in appropriate cases seek correction of the information through courts of law by way of judicial review applications.

Records and reports about prisoners are mainly created and maintained by prison and probation officers. Without doubt many report writers are professional and objective when making reports; yet inaccuracies can often feature in reports. The inaccuracies are usually a result of mistake or administrative error; although in a minority of cases some not so unbiased officials can cause negative entries to appear on the records. This can be motivated by an intention to punish a prisoner for poor behaviour but regardless of the reason, apart from being a criminal offence to make false entries on a prisoner’s record; it is not in law the place of a prison officer to dish out additional punishment above the sentence issued by a court.

The effect of these negative entries can be very adverse to a prisoner. By way of illustration we would consider two areas of prison law that are for most prisoners the two most important aspects of their sentence: these are Categorisation and Parole.

Categorisation determines what kind of prison estate a prisoner will be located in with the most secure and uncomfortable estates being Category A. The less restrictive prisons where prisoner can take a walk to the local park or Tesco are Category D. Categories B and C fall between these two and the general idea is that imprisonment becomes more comfortable in ascending order from A to D. Parole on the other hand determines how long a convicted person will remain in prison custody. A prisoner who is well behaved and achieves certain set targets may be released from custody anytime after the halfway point of sentence. Such a prisoner will then serve the remainder of their sentence in the community under supervision of probation staff. The Parole Board determines on what date a prisoner will be released and the Categorisation Board reviews and decides individual categorisation of prisoners.

With reference to information law and prison practice the important thing to note is that these two boards conduct their proceedings by paper reviews in absence of the prisoner concerned. It follows that by and large parole and categorisation board decisions are informed by contents of dossiers presented to the boards for review.

In the case of the parole board the parole board rules require the board to take account of all information in the dossier and the parole board has no legal authority to remove or exclude any information contained in the dossier submitted to it.

So what happens then when information in a dossier submitted is incorrect and adverse to a prisoner to the extent that it is highly likely to ensure a negative outcome at review? First the prisoner is entitled to disclosure of the dossier and to legal advice on the dossier. The prisoner is further entitled to make written representations to the boards and is entitled to legal advice and assistance with representations. The representations will aim to deny the adverse allegations or entries and persuade the board to ignore the entries. As members of the parole board are usually persons of immaculate character and good judgement they may be so persuaded in some cases. Unfortunately in many cases it is more likely that the assertions of hardworking public servants as recorded on the dossier will be preferred to a prisoner’s denial, and as such a prisoner with incorrect adverse entries on his dossier will suffer injustice.

This is why at Dozie & Co Solicitors we tend to prevent the adverse entries from making it into the dossiers and therefore prevent them from ever been seen by the boards. As the saying goes once the mud is thrown it tends to stick, in that once the board has seen allegations of bad character or dangerous behaviour it can hardly easily cast such information from its mind. The better way therefore is to challenge the inclusion of incorrect adverse information in the dossier and to aim for removal of such information from the dossier before presentation to the board. A successful challenge and removal of adverse entries maximises the prospect of success for a prisoner.

Information Law can be very useful to prisoners challenging any aspect of their treatment in prison and our prison law practitioners are always pleased to advice and assist on this and all other aspects of prison law.

The author of this article is Mr. Obinna Baranta.