Prison Law: securing your release.
Only few firms have a legal aid contract to provide prison law help in the South West and Trinity Advocates is one of them. Our team have an excellent reputation for providing help to prisoners, though we cannot provide legally aided help for all prisoner complaints. We can be contacted from prison by letter or phone and our office manger will confirm what we can do and get legal aid forms out to you. Or if a prisoner’s friend or relation wants to invite us to contact the prisoner then we might be able to act on that.
Trinity Advocates is a specialist criminal and prison law firm. As a team, we have over 25 years of prison law experience between us. We are one of only a few specialist criminal law firms in the South West which also offers prison law advice.
Although, sadly, Legal Aid has been cut a great deal, free legal aid is still available (subject to a means assessment) for a number of prison law issues, including (but not limited to):-
- Independent Adjudications:
This relates to allegations of breaches of the Prison Rules which are referred to the Independent Adjudicator (a District Judge) for their consideration. The Independent Adjudicator can impose a punishment of additional days, which would adversely affect your date of release.
- Parole Board Paper Reviews:
Applications for early release, release on life licence, or re-release after recall, which are considered by the Parole Board “on the papers” rather than at an oral hearing.
Oral Parole Board Hearings:
Applications for early release, release on life licence, or re-release after recall, which are to considered by the Parole Board at an oral hearing (whether by video-link, or live).
- Sentence Calculations:
This refers to either a case where the date of release is disputed, or to a Minimum Term Review application to the High Court. Before legal aid can be granted, you must have exhausted the internal complaints process system (and be able to provide evidence of this in the form of copy COMP1 and response and COMP1a and response and/or use of the Sentence Calculation Helpline) and more than 6 months has passed since the date of sentence.
- Written representations to the PPCS for indeterminate prisoner LISP4 cases:
In cases were indeterminate sentence prisoners have been removed from open conditions, they are served with a form LISP4. Written representations can be submitted to the Public Protection Casework Section (PPCS) to appeal the LISP4 removal reasons.