Prisons

Prisoners refusing to wear prison clothes - banned from servery and allowed only one meal per day in their cells - disciplinary measures not to interfere with prisoners' right to adequate foodR.

v Governor of Frankland Prison, ex parte Russell and Another: QBD (Lightman J): 10 July 2000

During the periods of their sentence the applicants were found guilty of disciplinary offences and sentenced to periods of cellular confinement in the segregation unit of a high security prison.

The applicants considered that having to wear prison clothes whilst in the unit was a demeaning and unnecessary restriction upon them which, as it was not adopted at two of the other six high security prisons in the United Kingdom, was unnecessary and discriminated against them.

In protest they refused to wear the prison clothes provided and were naked or wrapped only in a blanket throughout their confinement.

For reasons of hygiene and decency the governor required the applicants to wear prison clothes in order to collect meals from the prison servery.

Prisoners placed in the segregation unit who refused to wear prison clothes were not allowed to collect their meals from the servery but would instead have only one meal a day (instead of the usual three) brought to them in their cell.

The applicants sought an order quashing the governor's policy of serving only one meal per day to prisoners who refused to wear prison clothes to visit the servery, also a declaration that if they were not permitted to go to the servery they were entitled to have three meals per day delivered to their cell.Phillippa Kaufmann (instructed by Bhatt Murphy, Islington) for the applicants.

Steven Kovats (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) for the Secretary of State.Held, quashing the policy but declining to grant the declaration sought, that a governor could properly lay down conditions regulating access to the place where food was provided, (e.g.

requiring prisoners to wear appropriate clothing); that he could order prisoners to comply with such conditions and could treat disobedience to such an order as a disciplinary offence; that nevertheless the governor could not be excused from performance of the obligation under r.

24 of the Prison Rules 1964 (SI 1964 No.

388) to provide adequate food to the prisoner by such conditions or by the failure of a prisoner to comply with them; that whilst the governor need not accede to the prisoners' demands, he had to adopt some alternative if he could not comply with his obligation in the ordinary way; that a governor might lay down policies for the treatment and feeding of prisoners unwilling to wear prison clothes, but the policy had to ensure that each prisoner was provided with adequate food; and that since the regime was of potentially indefinite duration, the limitation of provision to one meal per day was arbitrarily applied irrespective of the impact on the health of the individual prisoners, and there was no provision for monitoring and safeguarding the prisoners' health, then the policy could not be sustained.