Battling against injustice

Battling against injustice

By: John Hirst

Former lifer John Hirst explores how the media consistently use lurid and sensationalist headlines that are generally biased against prisoners.

Brendan Behan, the famous poet and playwright and former Borstal boy and ex-prisoner, is quoted as saying: “There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary”. I was pleased to read about recently released Charles Hanson’s legal victory in relation to getting financially reimbursed for paying for his own haircuts, when the cost should have been met by the Ministry of Justice. Even the so-called liberal Guardian newspaper headline screamed: “Murderer wins fight to get state to pay for his haircuts”. What his offence had to do with the issue is beyond me.

Similarly, in another case the Independent reports: “Rapist wins human rights claim”. On my blog I recently reported: “Prisoner victim in votes challenge against MoJ”, but the Yorkshire Post went with the headline: “Monster who raped and killed a child uses public funds to sue the government because they won't let him vote”. Unusually, the Daily Mail was slightly milder, reporting: “Child killer gets legal aid to launch bid for right to vote (and you're paying)”. It was followed by 18 rabid comments, all supporting the Daily Mail. When I submitted a comment which attempted to address the imbalance, it failed to get through the Mailonline’s comment moderation policy!

Thankfully, this bias against prisoners in the UK’s media is not going unnoticed by others. For example, Paul Mason is director of postgraduate research at Cardiff University and his research focuses on the relationships between the criminal justice system, public opinion and the media. The Prison Media Monitoring Unit (PMMU) scrutinizes British media coverage of prison and prisoners. Its monthly bulletins highlight errors, misinformation and distortion about prison issues which, the Unit believes, may have a significant effect on government policy and public attitudes towards prison, punishment and social control. Bulletins are based upon data collected from the UK's national daily newspapers.

Columnist Erwin James nicknamed the Minister of Justice “Knee-jerk Jack”. It is easy to see why, the Sun and/or Daily Mail headlines lash out at criminals or prisoners and Straw’s immediate response is to knee-jerk into action. The MoJ website carries a media statement: “Jack Straw cracks down on trivial prisoner legal claims”, and goes on to say: “Jack Straw has announced proposals to crack down on nuisance legal claims and new powers to seize money from prisoners”. Recently, the Daily Mail headline read: “Compensation floodgates may open after judge rules prison unlawfully destroyed inmate's smuggled mobile phone”. The MoJ then published a consultation document “Legal Aid: Refocusing on Priority Cases”. On page 8 it states: “A number of cases with limited benefits or public interest have been funded under the present criteria and procedures that we would not consider appropriate. An example is a recent case in relation to the destruction of a prisoner’s mobile telephone. This case had limited benefit to the individual, and a limited wider interest to other prisoners”.

The Guardian commissioned me to write an article in response to the MoJ’s proposals, it was called: “Don't deny justice to prisoners”. In said article, I posed the following question: “Surely if the problem is that the Ministry of Justice is breaking the law, then the solution to the problem is to stop breaking the law rather than to change the law to deny prisoners access to the courts to air their legitimate grievances?” It is said that reputation is everything. According to Total Politics, on the internet, the top 7 results are what counts on the Google search engine. Another authority states: “The real competition is in the top 10 of Google or even the top 5 so largely the rest of them are irrelevant”.

I was pleased to see that “Don't deny justice to prisoners” had the top 5 places and also the 7th place out of the top 10 on Google Search. It is a small victory for the prisoners’ voice to be heard outside of prison. Given that the government employs 10 staff to monitor the internet to see what is being said about the government, I think we can safely say that they got the message. It is free to subscribe to Google Alerts. Google emails you whenever anyone writes anything about you on the internet. Perhaps, the money wasted on ten civil servants’ salaries would be better spent on the legal aid budget for prisoners’ legal claims?

I have a grudging admiration for the genius who came up with the doublespeak Access to Justice Act 1999. Prior to this being passed by Parliament, poor people only had to look out for the legal aid sticker in solicitors’ office windows. Nowadays, the same people are being turned away by solicitors who claim that they can no longer afford to give advice or representation because the legal aid fees are too small. This amounts to a denial of access to justice. The government argues that unless a custodial sentence may be imposed, or someone’s reputation is in danger of being destroyed, then legal aid should not be granted. Lawyers no longer able to get money from outside work turned to the prison law funding because it was not capped by the government. Costs have risen from £1 million in 2001 to £22 million in 2009. The government is seeking to limit prisoners’ legal aid only to cover adjudications and Parole Board hearings.

In the UK, prisoners are not a popular group in society. This makes them particularly vulnerable to abuse of power by the authorities. The Minister legally responsible for such abuse is also the Minister who is seeking to prevent prisoners getting access to justice by denying them legal aid. However, as penologists observe: “The prisoner has realised that the two most important sources of relief are primarily prisoners’ revolt and then successful litigation”. Lord Chief Justice Woolf in his Report following the Strangeways Prison riot concluded that there was a lack of justice in prisons. Prisoners have a strong sense of injustice. Blowing the light out at the end of the tunnel would only confirm that prisoners are up against the Ministry of Injustice.

Published in Inside Time August issue.