Yesterday, a follow up report by the Association of Prison Lawyers (APL), ‘Justice Still Barred’, revealed that prisons are still refusing to facilitate legal visits between prisoners and their legal teams despite having the facilities to do so.
This followed up from the ‘Justice Barred’ report released in January 2024, which discussed evidence from 78 practitioners of their experiences across 46 prisons in England and Wales. This found widespread difficulties with practitioners trying to organise legal visits with their clients in prison between August 2022 and January 2024. Following the publication of this report, the prison service responded in the Financial Times to assure there had been widespread investment in video link technology and that ‘all prisons have video capability to facilitate meetings between lawyers and offenders.’ It also highlighted the employment of over 4,000 prison officers since March 2017 and claimed this was helping to facilitate in-person visits.
However, the APL’s latest report discusses further evidence gathered between January 2024 and April 2024, which found 80 examples of difficulties accessing legal visits across 35 prisons. This included many prisons not offering video links at all, others refusing in-person visits, or examples of ‘excessive delays’ in organising legal visits, or a lack of response to requests to arrange them from practitioners. For some practitioners, this meant they were unable to see their clients to prepare for hearings or submissions.
The report details some more specific examples, with one practitioner stating in April 2024 about Rochester that it was ‘Absolutely impossible to obtain access to my client in this prison’ due to no response on the visits line and no other means of arranging a visit. Another example provided by a practitioner about High Point said there was no access to video links, and visits had to be held in the open visiting hall, which would be ‘totally inappropriate’ in any case and may put certain clients at risk.
Some prisons were also reported multiple times by practitioners. This included Northumberland where there were seven examples of poor practice and no video link provision for solicitors or psychologists; there were six examples of poor practice at Stocken with very limited availability of video links; and five examples of poor practice at Wymott, again with no video links offered and only limited in-person visits.
In concluding the report, the APL highlight a prison system ‘on its knees.’ They said further action had been taken to arrange a meeting with the prisons minister to discuss the report, and that a meeting had been arranged with officials in June ‘to see what practical steps can be taken to remedy the appalling lack of access to justice in prisons.’
