Outrage At ‘Ludicrous’ Rights For Prisoners

A ruling that an armed robber’s human rights had been breached because telephone calls he made from jail were preceded by a recording stating he was calling from a prison was branded “ludicrous” last night.

Lord Glennie ruled at the Court of Session in Edinburgh that the message – “This call originates from a Scottish prison” – breached the right to privacy of convicted armed robber Stewart Potter.

The ruling raised fears of a spate of claims for damages from prisoners who are already protesting their rights have been breached by the practice of “slopping-out”.

Lord Glennie said the taped message – used on phone calls from all Scottish prisons – also “inhibited” the “social rehabilitation” of the prisoner, who is serving a 21-year sentence at Glenochil Prison in Clackmannanshire for assault and armed robbery.

He said it was also unlawful and embarrassing, contravening article eight of the Convention on Human Rights.

The Scottish Prison Service – which plays the message at the start of calls from all prisoners to protect victims, witnesses and others from potential harassment – said it was considering the implications of the ruling before deciding whether to appeal against it.

It is understood the service faces costs of about £2million in the wake of the slopping-out fiasco after offering damages of about £2,000 each to some 200 affected prisoners.

North-east Tory MSP Alex Johnstone said: “This is one more example of human rights law protecting criminals at the expense of victims.

“The next move may be for other prisoners to seek financial compensation and that would be appalling.

“I hope this does not result in another series of compensation cases.”

Dundee East MP Stuart Hosie, the SNP’s home affairs spokesman, branded the ruling “a damned disgrace” and called for an end to legal aid “for spurious cases like this”.

He added: “We are in the ridiculous situation where the Scottish Executive has been forced to spend £2million of taxpayers’ money defending these claims and it is a case of the law gone mad.”

Scottish Tory MEP Struan Stevenson said: “This is absolutely scandalous and it is time the European Convention on Human Rights was torn apart and reconstructed in a way that represents logic and commonsense instead of always ending up on the side of the criminal.

“It is preposterous. It is the victims we should be protecting and not the prisoners.”

Scottish human rights lawyer Cameron Fyfe, of solicitors Ross Harper, who represented prisoners in the slopping-out case, said it would be possible to sue only if a prisoner could establish loss or injury, such as the trauma and distress involved in having to slop out.

He said: “There might conceivably be a situation where he could argue that the message caused distress, upset and trauma, but he would have to prove that before he could get damages.”

Mr Fyfe said the only way to establish this would be for someone to bring a test case.

The Scottish Prison Service is understood to be concerned that removing the messages would result in potential harm to some vulnerable people who are now protected.

It is believed that figures exist showing a higher proportion of calls starting with the message are terminated by recipients than the national average.

In court yesterday, Lord Glennie said the convention provided that everyone should have the right to respect for their private and family life, home and correspondence.

“In some societies it might be regarded as obvious that a person convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to a period of imprisonment should, for the duration of his imprisonment, be deprived of his civil rights,” he said.

“Such a notion has no place in our society.”

Lord Glennie said safeguards were already in place to protect the public from potential nuisance calls from prisoners, including having 20 pre-approved numbers available for an inmate, logging calls using a personal identification number and also recording and monitoring calls.

He said: “Those safeguards would appear to be entirely adequate to deal with any concern that the prisoner might seek to make unwanted calls to his victims or to vulnerable witnesses.”

The judge added: “Since the message is designed to give information only to the recipient of the call . . . it does not discipline or control the prisoner so much as provide information to someone outside the prison.

“There is, in my opinion, no power clearly given by the (Human Rights) Act, whether expressly or by necessary or obvious implication, to interfere with the prisoner’s civil rights in this way.”

Lord Glennie said the message would act as a deterrent to communicating with family and friends. If a prisoner phoned his children’s school or a friend, someone who was unaware he was a prisoner could answer the call.

This would cause “awkwardness and embarrassment”.

Lawyers for Potter had argued that the message alerted his children’s school to his incarceration.

It was claimed that the information was not relevant to his dealings with teachers and others.

A system that included the message was dropped in English prisons when it emerged that prisoners were having to pay for the part of their call containing the message. Under the Scottish system, they start to pay for the call only after the message has finished.

Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie warned last month that Scotland would become a laughing stock if Potter succeeded in his action.

Last night she said: “There is a clear issue here: are the rights of the law-abiding majority being served ahead of the rights of a minority who happen to be in jail? It appears not.

“I am fed up with the rights of the law-abiding majority being trampled over by the ridiculous grievances of convicts.”

SNP justice spokesman Kenny MacAskill said: “This is utterly outrageous. People who breach the law must pay the price. Hard-working taxpayers’ money is being used to fund these legal aid cases, money which could be going to help vulnerable people in need of legal representation.”