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Prisoners' Advice Service

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Prisoners' Advice Service
Founded1991
TypeNGO
3180659
Registration no.1054495
Location
  • PO Box 46199 London EC1M, UK
Area served
England & Wales
Revenuecharitable donations
Websitehttp://www.prisonersadvice.org.uk/

Prisoners' Advice Service (PAS) is a registered charity that offers free legal advice and support to adult prisoners throughout England and Wales regarding their human and legal rights, the conditions of their imprisonment and the application of Prison Law and the Prison Rules.

PAS was set up in 1991 by organisations working with prisoners, including Liberty, the Howard League for Penal Reform and Nacro.


Services

Prisoners' Advice Service provides telephone access to legal advice, as well as assistance when human rights have been violated, abused or ignored.[citation needed]

Letters Clinics provide prisoners with a second means of receiving legal advice. Prisoners are able to correspond confidentially with PAS' Caseworkers. To accommodate the large numbers of letters received by PAS, students at various universities, as well as numerous corporate legal departments, now run Letters Clinics for PAS on a pro bono basis.[citation needed]

A young female prisoner writing a letter in her cell. HMP Styal.

Outreach Clinics are run by PAS Caseworkers as a means of bringing legal advice directly into prisons.

In 2013, PAS created a range of Self Help Toolkits as a means of helping prisoners to understand, or undertake, certain, simpler, legal procedures for themselves. Sent to 117 prison libraries across England and Wales, the set of 10 kits were written and designed by PAS’ Caseworkers and are also available in Easy Read versions for those with low literacy levels, or whose first language is not English.

PAS produces a quarterly Prisoners’ Legal Rights Bulletin, which shares information about key cases and changes in Prison Law. The bulletins are available to all by subscription and are available to prisoners at no cost.

Casework

PAS also represents prisoners, taking legal action against prisons where cases merit it. PAS aids prisoners in pursuing a variety of cases, including judicial review cases and parole hearings.

Much of PAS' work focuses specifically on women, as women prisoners often face unique challenges and inequalities. Women require specialist attention in prison because around two thirds have dependent children and many have, themselves, been the victims of crime and abuse. Women are also subject to short custodial sentences for minor crimes such as Council Tax evasion or shoplifting. These can, nevertheless, cause women to lose their jobs – or have children taken into care. In addition, with so few women’s prisons in England and Wales, women are often incarcerated hundreds of miles from home and family.[1]

A female prisoner with her three month old baby in the mother and baby unit.

In 2016-17, 11% of all calls to PAS’ Advice Line were from women, who constitute only 5% of the prison population as a whole. [2] Often the Article 8 rights (of the European Convention on Human Rights) of the women and their children to a “private and family life” are ignored. Furthermore, women with children over the age of 16 are frequently denied Childcare Resettlement Leave, despite the fact that only persons over 18 are permitted to attend prison unaccompanied by an adult.

A Muslin prisoner prays on his matt inside his cell at Wandsworth prison.

PAS' Race and Religious Discrimination Caseworker strives to counter discrimination in prison and advises and represents prisoners who fall victim to unequal treatment.

PAS works with older prisoners who are given only limited access to work and require more specialized healthcare for chronic conditions. In working with disabled prisoners, PAS advises and represents those who may lack accommodation and adjustments, which can exclude them from prison and educational activities.

Two elderly and disabled prisoners walking down 'A' wing of HMP Littlehey.

A new focus area for Prisoners' Advice Service is upholding the rights of LGBTQ+ prisoners. LGBTQ+ prisoners are especially vulnerable to discrimination, sexual assault and exploitation in prison, from which all prisoners should be protected. For transgender prisoners, discrimination can be as extreme as being placed in solitary confinement as a means to protect them. Additionally, transgender prisoners must prove themselves to be transgender, which is often emotionally traumatic. At times, despite doing all that is required in order to identify as another gender, transgender prisoners are nevertheless wrongly allocated to prisons that do not match their gender identity.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ http://www.womeninprison.org.uk/research/key-facts.php
  2. ^ http://www.prisonersadvice.org.uk/information/pas-work-with-women-prisoners/
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