Legal Advice for Women Prisoners

Updated GlobalGiving Report

1 April to 30 June 2017

Author: Geof Jarvis; Fundraising and Communications Manager, PAS

Expansion of Outreach Clinics for Women and Disabled Prisoners

Since our last report, your kind donations have continued to help us to expand our outreach services for women and the disabled in prison across England and Wales.

Our Services for Women Prisoners

Over the course of the last three months – April, May and June 2017 – PAS has continued to deliver more Outreach Clinics in women’s prisons, providing nine clinics in five prisons: HMPs Downview, Send and Bronzefield (all in Surrey), New Hall (in West Yorkshire) and Styal (in Cheshire). Over the three month period, we helped 87 women face-to-face through Outreach Clinics alone.  We also received eight letters and fielded 20 calls to our Advice Line from these prisons in the same period. 

As the need for services for female prisoners grows, it is our intention to continue to expand these services throughout the course of the next three years. As we mentioned in our last report, our new project to provide specialist Family Law advice and support to mothers in prison is currently being rolled out to four pilot women’s prisons: HMPs Bronzefield, New Hall, Send and Styal.  Run in partnership with Rights of Women (RoW) and the University of Lancaster (LU), the project has now been operative for more than six months.  The desired outcome of this project will be that, despite their imprisonment, more mothers are able to assert their legal rights in relation to their children and to engage effectively in Family Law proceedings

Working with Disabled Prisoners

Over the last three months, your support has helped support our Community Care Caseworkers to deliver seven Outreach Clinics in five prisons: HMPs Pentonville, Thameside and Wandsworth (all in London), HMP Leyhill (Gloucester), and HMP Lewes (East Sussex).  During clinics, our Caseworkers held 76 face-to-face meetings with individual, disabled prisoners.   Your grant also helped Caseworkers to deal with 19 telephone calls and 11 letter enquiries from these prisons during this three month window.

PAS helps prisoners with disabilities to obtain the auxiliary aids that they require, for example, crutches, wheelchairs, etc. We assist prisoners to gain access to prison workshops and to education classes. Our caseworkers can request that such classes be moved to the ground floor if disabled access to upper floors is not possible. We also work to ensure extended library book loans for dyslexic prisoners and the provision of large print books for visually impaired prisoners.

Some prisons, local authorities, probation services and NHS Trusts fail to meet their legal responsibilities towards prisoners with physical and mental disabilities both during their time in prison and when they are due for release. We liaise and negotiate with these bodies and, where necessary, issue Judicial Review claims against them if they fail to meet their duties towards such prisoners. 

Case Study1: Reuniting a Women Prisoner with Her Children on Release

Prisoner C, a female prisoner who was at risk of being released homeless in three weeks’ time, contacted PAS for help. She had applied to her prison for Resettlement Overnight Release (ROR), which permits prisoners to spend time overnight at the place they will be living once they are released from prison and is intended to help prisoners reintegrate with life outside prison. The prison refused her application.

Without secured accommodation, upon release from jail, the prisoner would not be allowed to reunite with her children, for whom she was sole carer. Her concern to be with her children and resume her role as their sole carer was acute – particularly as one of her daughters was undergoing tests for a terminal illness.  Our Women’s Caseworker wrote to the prison challenging the legality of its decision to deny ROR in the last 28 days of sentence, citing the Article 8 rights (of the European Convention on Human Rights) of the woman and her children to a “private and family life”.  Within 24 hours of PAS’ intervention, the prison reversed its decision and granted ROR to Prisoner C.

Case Study 2: Obtaining Fit-for-Purpose Wheelchair for Disabled Prisoner

A beneficiary of our specialist social welfare project work with disabled prisoners: Prisoner D We acted on behalf of a disabled prisoner (Prisoner D) who had been provided with a broken wheelchair that was not fit for purpose. The back wheels were so small that he could not reach them to push himself along and therefore he was not capable of independent movement.  Then the footrests broke and were not replaced.  Prisoner D has a progressive spinal condition which means that he cannot raise his feet.  So the absence of footrests caused his feet to drag continually along the ground when he was being pushed along, inducing pain and ruining his shoes.  The situation caused him to feel very vulnerable and humiliated and his mobility was severely restricted. Prison officers refused to push him in his wheelchair; some alleging that they required training in order to so do.  This meant that Prisoner D was unable to move around the prison unless a fellow prisoner helped him.

By the time Prisoner D contacted us, he had been using a broken wheelchair for over six months and had been submitting written and verbal complaints to the prison, asking for a replacement, without success. Our Caseworker wrote to the prison pointing out the breach of their legal duty and asking them to provide a suitable wheelchair and assistance. She stressed that The Equality Act 2010 imposes a duty on public bodies to provide necessary ‘auxiliary aids’ to disabled persons (in Prisoner D’s case a working wheelchair).  She eventually threatened Judicial Review if this was not forthcoming. Following our intervention, Prisoner D has now been provided with a functioning wheelchair, with footrests, so that he can push himself along.  The prison now also pays another prisoner on his wing to act as his carer.

In Conclusion

Prisoners’ Advice Service remains most grateful to GlobalGIving for helping to support our work with female and disabled prisoners in England and Wales. Without the assistance of charitable organisations such as your own, the work that we do with vulnerable prisoners would be severely curtailed. 

Links:

• Visit PAS' Website