Now prisons offer convicts advice on suing their jailers
PRISONERS are being given direct access to information that could help them sue over human rights breaches.
A new report by Scotland’s jails watchdog reveals special ‘ATM’-style devices provide inmates with a link to details about the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
It means criminals at HMP Kilmarnock can use an ‘ATM’ to find out about potential breaches of their rights before using phones to call pre-programmed numbers for lawyers.
The disclosure will heighten concern that the system makes it too easy for prisoners to make often frivolous, taxpayer-funded claims for damages.
Last night Scottish Tory justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: ‘No one would argue that inmates should be denied legal advice altogether but it does seem, given prisoner litigation is becoming an increasing problem, we’re perhaps making it too easy for them.’
The report published today by David Strang, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, states that ‘prisoners’ international human rights as asserted in law are respected’. It discloses that ‘prisoners had direct access to all information under ECHR via a link on the front page of the ATM system’.
These included ‘a full range of contact details available via the ATM system, as well as a large volume of lawyers’ numbers pre-programmed onto each prisoner’s telephone account’.
He found ‘the provision of a prisoner-operated digital information system, known locally as the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) and available on each residential wing, was an effective means of communication with the prisoners’.
Prisoners can email approved addresses from the terminal while relatives can put a limited amount of cash into inmates’ bank accounts using an online service. The ‘ATM’ is a nickname – it does not issue cash.
Another facility at Low Moss in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, has a special area where inmates can contact the European Court of Human Rights. Staff ‘facilitate contact’ so convicts can prepare taxpayer-funded cases. Using legal aid, prisoners have wasted millions of pounds of public cash on trivial cases, such as a child rapist who sued his jail because he was ‘bored’ and an inmate who sued over dirty socks.
A spokesman for private firm Serco, which runs HMP Kilmarnock, said there had been no ‘uplift’ in breach claims as a result of the ATMs, and said it was standard practice for lawyers’ numbers to be loaded onto prison phones.
‘Taking ludicrous cases to court’