Legal Advice for Women Prisoners

Working with Women Prisoners

Over the last quarter of 2019, your support helped our Women’s Caseworker to deliver 13 Outreach Clinics in 6 prisons: HMPs Bronzefield, New Hall, Send, Eastwood Park, Downview, and Styal. During these clinics, our Caseworker held one-to-one meetings with 82 women prisoners. A total of 6 cases were opened on behalf of women prisoners during this time period.

For 2019 overall, 7% of calls to PAS came from women prisoners, and 33% of letters were from women prisoners.

Case Study: Two Women Prisoners Granted Childcare Resettlement Leave

Two female prisoners had been refused Childcare Resettlement Leave (CRL). CRL is a form of temporary release available to low risk prisoners who can demonstrate that they have sole caring responsibility for a child under 16.  Both of the women were able to demonstrate that they did have children under 16, but were refused CRL because of the length of time still remaining on their sentences.

At that time, CRL was only available for prisoners in open prisons; to those who have only two years or less left until their release. The two women both had more than two years left to serve.  However, separation from their mothers was having a deleterious impact on the mental health of the children involved: one was undergoing counselling and another being treated for depression.

PAS acted on the case, supporting the women in taking a Judicial Review of the prison’s response to their plight. The judge found the prison’s decision to be unlawful and stated that, when considering CRL applications, the Article 8 Right to a Family Life of the European Convention on Human Rights, and Article 3(1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, should be taken into account.

In this case, our intervention and the consequent ruling righted an unjust policy, thus protecting the rights of the children and their sole carers.  Considering the best interests of any children involved in a case is now a legal prerequisite in decisions by prisons on CRL applications. The ruling also changed the law such that all prisoners can now apply for CRL at any point in their sentence, not just during the last two years.  As such, a large proportion of the prison community has potentially benefitted from this.

In Conclusion

Prisoners’ Advice Service remains most grateful to GlobalGiving for helping to support our work with women prisoners in England and Wales. Without the assistance of donations from individuals such as yourself, the work that we do with vulnerable prisoners would be severely curtailed.