Liberty Or Not

August 2013

At liberty to do what

"Emma Davies, Head of the Prison Law department at Hine Solicitors, together with Michaela Henderson-Thynne of the Department look at licence conditions

Prisoners who have been subject to a sentence of 12 months or over and who are released from custody into the community will be subject to a licence period as part of their sentence. This licence period will include numerous licence conditions. In the latter part of last year a new Prison Service Instrument (PSI) 40/2012 was introduced dealing with the issue of licence conditions. This article examines some of the main principles of that PSI to inform prisoners who may soon be subject to release on licence of these principles and what they need to watch out for."

Internet related licence conditions. 

"There were previously very onerous additional licence conditions that could be imposed which related to computer and internet access. These can no longer be imposed upon newly released prisoners unless they are imposed as bespoke licence conditions (see 2.20 of PSI 40/2012).

An application for these old additional conditions will therefore need to be made to the Public Procircumtection Casework Section [Public Protection Casework Section] (PPCS) at the Ministry of Justice. They will then only form part of a prisoner's licence as a bespoke condition if permission is granted by the PPCS.

However there are still additional conditions that can be imposed upon a prisoner, without the need for permission from the PPCS, which relate to computer access/ownership. These are worded differently and are set out at 2.20 of PSI 40/2012."

http://www.insidetime.org/articleview.asp?a=1556&c=at_liberty_to_do_what