No more legal aid
On 2 January 2014 almost all prison law legal aid under the ‘advice and assistance’ scheme ceased to be available. This cut will not be the last: a further attack on funding for judicial reviews is still in the pipeline, together with the implementation of the controversial ‘residence test’.
Prisoners’ access to legal aid has been hacked away in recent years, with the first major cut in 2010 when the newly-elected Coalition adopted the plans of the outgoing Labour government. Today, as Labour MPs Sadiq Khan and David Lammy castigate the government for its ongoing attacks, it is important to remember that it was Labour, not the Tories, which introduced fixed fees and took away legal aid for prison ‘treatment cases’.
The Ministry of Justice has gleefully distributed an information sheet to prisoners telling them all the things lawyers can no longer get funding to advise on, and prison staff are freely interpreting the lack of free legal advice as the removal of legal rights. Such misinformation needs to be countered. Although the loss of legal aid is of course a massive blow, the legal rights which prisoners have fought for over the years are not dependent on its existence, and have not been taken away by its loss. Some solicitors will continue to provide prison law advice for free or for low fees, or by the use of other legal aid contracting arrangements not yet affected by the cuts, and it is now more important than ever for prisoners to educate themselves on the law and take their own cases to the courts where possible.
No prospect of release
On the same day the legal aid was cut, as if to make sure that public sympathy would in no way rally to the side of the prisoners, the government announced it was considering the introduction of a US-style sentencing scheme, in which terms of 100 or even 1,000 years custody could be handed down for the most serious offences.
The government is angry that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that life sentence prisoners should retain some possibility, no matter how slim, of release prior to death. This is not the first occasion on which Britain has responded to adverse legal rulings by simply changing the law in order to get its punitive way. In 2003, following ECtHR and House of Lords judgments, Labour Party minister David Blunkett changed the law to restrict judges’ ability to set low tariffs (minimum custodial periods) for lifers.
Oakwood – unrest continues
January 2014 also saw yet another disturbance at Oakwood, Britain’s largest prison. Oakwood, which is run by private contractors G4S, has been the scene of repeated protests since it opened in 2012. Accounts of what actually happened in the latest incident on 5 January vary: G4S management claims it was an incident of ‘concerted indiscipline’ which was brought under control without too much difficulty, while a prison officer from the ‘Tornado team’ squad sent in to put down the protest has described it to the BBC as a ‘full-scale riot’. Tornado teams are made up of specially trained officers from other prisons who are sent into riot or disturbance situations. They are generally made up of POA members from state prisons who oppose the privatisation of imprisonment, not on the grounds that this adversely affects prisoners, but because it harms their own pay and conditions.
The truth probably lies somewhere between the claims of the two competing political agendas. However, the statement by Jerry Petherick, G4S Managing Director for Custodial and Detention, (formerly Prison Service South West Area Manager until recruited by G4S) that these repeated incidents are just teething problems which will be resolved when the prison ‘beds down’ is unlikely to prove true.
An unhealthy regime
Health services at Oakwood are provided by Worcester Health and Care NHS Trust, who have been contracted by the local Staffordshire PCT. Despite the prison housing men with a wide range of physical and mental illnesses and disabilities, as well as drug and alcohol addictions, health care is only accessible during office hours. Any prisoner who needs medical attention during evenings or weekends must either wait or make sufficient fuss for the prison to call an ambulance. BBC Radio 4 recently reported that in 2013 ambulances were called to Oakwood on 358 occasions – almost daily. In September 2013 a Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection failed health care at Oakwood on five of six standards. There have been repeated reports of nurses telling prisoners ‘you’ll get what you are given’ and ‘well, if you are in pain, it’s too bad’ when they ask for medication. The CQC inspection reported that a prisoner with a walking aid and visual and hearing impairments was classed as having no disabilities and regularly missed taking medicines as he couldn’t reach the medication room.
Nicki Jameson
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 237 February/March 2014
