Legal Advice for Women Prisoners

Update on Activities and Campaign Results So Far

A massive Thank You from PAS! Through your generosity, we have raised nearly £7,000 so far for our project giving free legal advice to women prisoners and disabled prisoners on their rights. We hope you enjoy reading this report on the past 6 months of the project.

Women Prisoners

Since our last update on activities in August, your donations have enabled our Women Prisoners Caseworker to deal with hundreds of telephone and letter enquiries from prisoners, and to deliver 13 legal advice clinics in 4 women’s prisons: HMPs Holloway (in London), East Sutton Park (Kent), Send (Surrey), and New Hall (West Yorkshire).  A further 16 clinics were delivered to women prisoners by Peer Advisers - prisoner volunteers who had been trained by our Caseworkers to provide basic legal information and advice to their fellow prisoners.  In October, one of these Peer Advisers was awarded ‘Champion of Justice’ Award at the London Legal Support Trust’s 10th Anniversary event.  This award celebrates people who are crucial to delivering essential free legal services as “Unsung Heroes".  The award was given to one of the first group of prisoner Peer Advisers whom we had trained, in conjunction with St Giles Trust, to establish our prisoner-led advice clinic at HMP Send five years ago.  

Overall we have helped 241 women prisoners in the past 6 months through the clinics alone, and hundreds more through the telephone calls, letters and casework.  We are also progressing in our plans to extend our clinics into other women’s prisons around the country.

Demand has remained high for our Women Prisoners Caseworker’s services.  Prisoner numbers attending our HMP East Sutton Park clinics have increased.  Following our first clinic at HMP New Hall in December – which was very well-attended - we recorded a subsequent increase in calls from that prison to our telephone helpline, which demonstrates the outreach clinics’ importance in raising prisoner awareness of our services.

In January, our Women Prisoners Caseworker delivered a presentation to HMP Holloway’s Independent Monitoring Board, raising their awareness of: our services in that prison, how we work with female prisoners, and the circumstances in which they can refer cases to us.

She was also invited in December to become a professional member (in the capacity of a legal services representative) of The National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) guideline development committee for a new NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guideline on mental health for people in the criminal justice system.

A success story

Our Women Prisoners Caseworker acted for a prisoner, detained in a low secure psychiatric hospital, where she had been transferred from prison for treatment.  Even though she was considered well enough by a Mental Health Tribunal to be released from hospital, she needed to be released by the Parole Board before she could be discharged into the community.  Her local authority refused to pay for the cost of her post-release accommodation and care support services in the community.  Our Caseworker was approached by the hospital’s clinical team to help them resolve the funding dispute, without which the Parole Board would not be able to direct the woman’s release.  Our Caseworker corresponded with the local authority, setting out the woman’s legal rights and putting them on notice that judicial review proceedings would be instigated if funding was not agreed.  The local authority then reconsidered the matter and agreed to provide the funding.  This case highlights the difficulties that women prisoners with mental health conditions can face in obtaining the discharge care packages they require upon release.

Disabled Prisoners

Since August, your donations have supported our Community Care Caseworker to deliver 16 advice clinics within 3 London prisons: HMPs Pentonville, Thameside and Wandsworth.  At these clinics, she provided one-to-one legal advice and assistance to 145 prisoners, many of whom have a disability or mental health condition.  Your gifts have also supported her to deal with hundreds of telephone and letter enquiries from prisoners.  She has also been working on a number of ongoing cases helping and advising disabled prisoners.

In November, our Community Care Caseworker was a speaker at our Annual Lecture, our special event featuring Lord Ramsbotham as the keynote speaker on the topic "What Price Imprisonment?”.  She spoke about her work addressing disability discrimination on behalf of disabled prisoners, assisting them to obtain adequate care and suitable community care packages upon release.  She also spoke of two moving case studies to over 100 attendees.

In September, a 30 minute radio documentary called “Disabled Behind Bars” was re-broadcast on BBC Radio 4.  Our Community Care Caseworker featured in the documentary, talking about her work with disabled prisoners.  One of our former service users was also interviewed in the programme.  This radio broadcast (and the above speaking engagement) have helped to raise the public profile of our important work with disabled prisoners and the particular difficulties they face.

A success story

Our Community Care Caseworker successfully obtained a direction for release on parole for one disabled prisoner who had been imprisoned for 30 years. He is elderly and infirm and has a heart condition, reduced mobility, and was also demonstrating significant cognitive decline – including a drastically impaired short term memory.  He is the co-founder of a charitable trust helping to improve literacy in prison.  She secured a comprehensive community care package for him, providing a suitable release address.  This enabled the parole panel to direct his release so that he could resettle successfully in the community.  His placement is a specialist supportive care home that specifically supports those who have been institutionalised.  Our Caseworker also initiated arrangements for him to receive mentoring in the community from an ex-prisoner who is now a journalist.

Other PAS news

In December, we were delighted to be shortlisted for the 2014 Liberty Human Rights 'Close to Home' Award. The citation concluded as follows: "With so many left without access to legal advice because of the removal of legal aid, PAS's work is more important than ever. The organisation is also challenging legal aid cuts, recently obtaining permission to have its case against the Ministry of Justice heard in the Court of Appeal."

We have recently launched our new look website – please visit it to find out more about our work: www.prisonersadvice.org.uk

Thank You

Thank you again for your important support which is making it possible for us to provide free legal advice to women prisoners and disabled prisoners on their rights.  We will continue to update you on our progress on this project in the months to come.

50% Matched Funding Offer!

We are delighted to announce that Global Giving will be running a 50% matched funding offer for this project in the first week of March. If you have been inspired by what you have read in this report, and would like to make a further contribution to support our work, please donate on Monday 2^nd March at 2.00pm or ASAP after that, and your kind donation will be worth 50% more!

Thanks very much for your support.

PAS

Links:

• Visit our new look website