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Lawyers have warned they are running into “routine obstacles” in attempting to communicate with their clients in prison in England and Wales, in the latest sign of alarm in the legal profession about the state of the justice system.
A report by the Association of Prison Lawyers presented to justice minister Mike Freer this month identified multiple examples of the authorities offering lawyers only “extremely limited” availability for appointments with inmates.
Rikki Garg, chair of the APL, said the report found lawyers were encountering “widespread difficulties” in “getting to see their clients” in-person or over video link.
Nick Emmerson, president of the Law Society, said the lack of face-to-face interaction was contributing to trial hold-ups, “worsening the current court backlogs”.
The research, due to be published on Monday, comes amid intensifying concerns among lawyers that funding pressures are leading to a deepening crisis both in prisons and the wider justice system.
Sam Townend KC, the new chair of the bar council, warned in his inaugural speech this month that the criminal justice system was “at the point of structural failure”. Among many problems he cited was a backlog of about 66,500 Crown Court cases that was leaving victims and the accused waiting months for justice.
Lawyers require access to clients to advise them on preparations for parole hearings or trials. They had previously also offered advice on prison conditions but that role has largely disappeared because of cuts to legal aid, solicitors said.
More than 87,000 people were in prison in England and Wales at the end of September, according to the most recent data. More than 16,000 of those were awaiting trial or sentencing. Delays in the court system mean they can spend months on remand.
The research collated 78 examples of lawyers’ experiences in seeking access to clients by video link or in person at 46 jails in England and Wales, mostly during 2023.
The analysis gathered correspondence between solicitors and prison authorities that showed some were offering only one in-person appointment per week, often in busy halls with no privacy, as well as “excessive” waits for video links.
One solicitor who requested access to a prisoner in London last November for an elderly man with mobility issues was told there was no availability until this month.
Another prison in Kent told a lawyer that there was no appointment available for a month, which meant a deadline for submitting representations about parole would be missed.
HM Prison and Probation Service said it had invested significantly in video technology and that between January and November, 96,000 video calls were made between lawyers and prisoners, up 16 per cent since 2022.
It said all prisons have video capability to facilitate meetings between lawyers and offenders.
“Our continued investment in new technology — and the thousands more prison officers we’ve hired — has helped to increase the number of visits taking place in the past 12 months”, it said in a statement.
It also said more than 4,000 prison officers had been hired since March 2017 helping more in-person meetings to take place each day.
But the author of the report, solicitor Laura Janes, said the analysis found “routine obstacles” in “people getting access to their lawyers, which is a fundamental right”. She said the difficulties were a sign of “daily headbanging dysfunction” in the justice system.
Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said there “should be no reason now in 2024 why some prisons are still unable to provide access to online legal visits”.
The report cited two examples of prisons that allowed access to be arranged easily. “It does not have to be this way,” it said.