Category A prisoners (2)
01 August 2003
The Home Office is likely to abandon a blanket policy of refusing to let Category A prisoners see reports assessing their risk levels after a judgement in the High Court. Mr Justice Munby said that Alan Lord, a Category A prisoner serving life for murder, had been "wronged" and "treated shabbily and unfairly" by the prison service policy of disclosing only the "gist" of risk assessments and not the full reports. Category A prisoners are entitled to have their security categorisations reviewed annually and can request recategorisation and transfer to less secure conditions. Reports are drawn up by prison staff, doctors, psychologists and probation officers, with an overall recommendation by the prison governor or deputy governor, and a "gist" of these reports is disclosed to the prisoner from which to make representations. Mr Justice Munby said that the gist statement in Alan Lord’s case was defective in that it gave the impression that views about his risk were unanimous and failed to disclose that two of five reports had recommended reclassification at a lower risk level and that a third had expressed no view. The defects in the statement "were serious and pervasive" and "concealed and suppressed vital information" and therefore "fell far short of what both the law and elementary principles of fairness and justice require..." He added: "Worse than that, it goes a long way to depriving him of any meaningful ability to make worthwhile representations". The judge noted that the evidence strongly suggested that what had happened in Lord’s case was far from an isolated error. "I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that there may well be others...who have, I fear, been treated as shabbily and unfairly as the claimant."
The Home Office had argued that the policy protected report writers from revenge attacks by prisoners. The judge held that, while there would be cases in which the Home Secretary would be justified in withholding reports, a blanket policy was unjustified.
Until December 1993, and the judgement in R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex p Duggan (1994) 3 All ER 277, the position had been that Category A prisoners were not entitled to know the reasons for their categorisation. In Payne v Home Office (2 May 1977, unreported) Justice Cantley took the view that the provision of sufficient information to allow prisoners to fully understand the reasons for their categorisation could seriously hamper and frustrate the proper management of prisoners. In the Duggan case, Lord Justice Rose noted that: "A prisoners' right to make representations is largely valueless unless he knows the case against him and secret, unchallengeable reports which may contain damaging inaccuracies and which result in loss of liberty are, or should be, anathema in a civilised, democratic society." That "should be" was of some significance. After Duggan, Category A prisoners were entitled to know the gist of reports prepared, but, although full disclosure became the norm as regards parole, sentence planning, tariff setting and categorisation of non-Category A prisoners, until the decision re. Alan Lord, the gist, and the attendant inaccuracies and deceptions it contained, was all the Category A prisoner were allowed to see. In 1998, in R v Secretary of State for the Home Department exp McAvoy (1998) 1 WLR 790 the Court of Appeal rejected an argument for full disclosure. Five years on, and the judiciary has recognised that the argument cannot any longer be resisted, but during those five years a large minority of prisoners have endured the restrictions on contact with friends and family, and frequent, disruptive transfer around the high security estate, which Category A status entails.
Guardian 2.9.03; Times 2.9.03.