Mrs. Becker had started an action as trustee when she was sent to prison for obtaining credit as a bankrupt. She applied to leave prison in order to conduct her case. The Home Secretary made a direction for her production under Section 29 of the Criminal Justice Act 1961 subject to her prepayment of the costs. She left prison 9 times to conduct her proceedings and andpound;8.17 was deducted from monies held on her behalf. In these proceedings she sued, inter alia, for the return of that sum. The County Court had found for her. The Home Secretary appealed.
Held: The appeal succeeded. A breach of the prison rules does not, per se, give rise to a cause of action against the governor or Home Office. The Prison Rules are mere ‘regulatory directions’.
Lord Denning MR drew a distinction between impeding access to the courts and allowing a party to attend court.
Stephenson LJ said: ‘Under Section 29(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1961, the Secretary of State has a discretionary power to allow him or her out of the place where the sentence is being served, but not out of Custody unless he otherwise directs : Section 29(2). A condition necessary to the exercise of this discretion is that he should be satisfied that the prisoners attendance at another place is desirable in the interests of justice or for the purposes of any public inquiry. If and only if satisfied of that, he may direct the prisoner to be taken to that place. Those words are, I think limited by their context and their history to the desirability of the prisoner leaving prison for the purposes of conducting litigation as a party or of giving evidence in his own or another’s litigation, criminal or civil.’
Judges:
Lord Denning MR, Edmund Davies, Stephenson LJJ
Citations:
[1972] 2 QB 407
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Regina v Deputy Governor of Parkhurst Prison, Ex parte Hague, Weldon v Home Office HL 24-Jul-1991
The prisoner challenged the decision to place him in segregation under Prison Rule 43. Under rule 43(1) the initial power to segregate was given to ‘the governor’. The case arose from the fact that the governor of one prison had purported to . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Prisons
Updated: 18 May 2022; Ref: scu.271095