The history of prisonlawinsideout.

There is the element of knowing a subject, and the common phrase when people refer to someone knowing a subject well, that is, inside out. It is only since the late 80s and early 90s, that prison law has come to be recognised as a specialist area of law in its own right. Prior to that, it was part of administrative law, public and private law, statutes, and the various circular instructions and standing orders issued by the Home Office. As a consequence of the Hull Prison riot in 1976, and the subsequent prisoner litigation, and reawakening of judicial review which established case-law, it was only a matter of time before it was shoved into its own bracket.

It was a coincidence that I found myself, late in 1989, in Hull Prison. And I wanted to legally challenge the Home Office for monetary damages for the loss of some of my personal property. I did exactly what anyone else would do in the same situation outside of prison, and that was contact a lawyer. In fact, I contacted six different lawyers over a period of time, for advice, and they all charged the public purse for their fees and yet none of them delivered the advice. I told a friend, Lucy, who visited me, about how frustrated I was at this state of affairs, and she said she had a friend called Humphrey, who worked at Humberside Law Centre, and she would ask him if he would visit me and see if he could help me out.

Humphrey said to forget about the Legal Aid forms, and confessed that he had no knowledge of prison law, and asked me to teach him. It was only at that point that I realised that those other six lawyers were also ignorant of prison law, but that they had not got the courage to admit their ignorance. We went ahead and won the case on the steps of the court house, the Home Office admitted liability and agreed to pay the full damages. Meanwhile, another case came up and Humphrey prepared the instructions for the barrister, and included within this the admission that he knew relatively little about prison law. The barrister, Tim Owen, was exactly the same, and he realised that lawyers knowledge of the law stopped outside of the prison gates. At best a lawyer could only approach the subject from an outside in perspective, I supplied the missing link by developing the law from an inside out perspective. Hence, prisonlawinsideout.

Once it was established that solicitors and barristers were ignorant of the law, and that judges are former barristers, it soon became apparent that judges were ignorant of the law. Whereas outside of prison things are taken for granted when reading instructions and briefs, this was not the case in prison law. Nothing could be taken for granted, and these things needed to be explained to the judges and how they related to the general principles of English law, for the judges to understand what the case was about and to enable them to judge. Tim Owen went onto to become a QC, and then a judge, and is now a Lord Justice. There is an old saying amongst prison officers, if you want to know something ask a prisoner. In this case, that is certainly true.