“to be released today”
“To whom it may concern, I have been asked to clarify the out of hours process for releases. Normal releases are sent to the OMU mailbox. Out of hours the below paragraph is in place on that mailbox and explains how to contact the duty governor who is responsible out of hours. The HMP Pentonville OMU mailbox is monitored between 9:00am and 16:30pm, Monday to Friday. If a Prisoner after 5pm is required to attend court, or the communication is regarding a bail that has been granted, a notice of discontinuance or an automatic release for time served, please contact: Reception on 0207 023 7168 /169 Email: Reception.Pentonville@justice.gov.uk or Comms on 0207 023 7007 who will be able to direct your query to the Duty Governor -otherwise the communication will NOT be actioned until the NEXT WORKING DAY. Thank you OMU HMP PENTONVILLE The reception mailbox is monitored out of hours and the Comms is staffed 24hrs a day. There is a Duty Governor on call for 24hrs. The Duty Governor will organise the release etc with support from the Head of OMU, operational support line, public protection OOH support line, the regional on-call and whoever is on I/C (Governor or deputy Governor). Given that the release was transacted yesterday I would say that the process worked as expected, however always keen to receive feedback in ways we can improve. Simon Drysdale Governing Governor”
“17. Where the Duty Governor becomes aware that a prisoner should be released out of hours, they should notify one of the two Heads of the Offender Management Unit. Staff at the Offender Management Unit only work Monday to Fridays, but in this scenario, they are asked to work overtime to compile the necessary information and complete the necessary checks. 18. However, as set out above, HMP Pentonville rely upon other parties to finalise release and the courts, Probation Service and Home Office have cut off times at the same or a similar time. In particular, Community Offender Managers (and local Senior Probation Officers) do not have an out of hours service with respect to preparing licences for those released out of hours. Nor does the Home Office with respect to authorising the release of Foreign Nationals. This causes very real problems for the release of prisoners out of hours as licence conditions are imposed for the protection of the public.”
“32 There are five troubling features of this case. 33 First, no-one (including a Serco employee, a police custody officer or a prison officer or governor) may detain another person, except with lawful authority. Where the authority relied upon is a court order, the extent of the authority to detain depends on the terms of the order. In this case, the remand order was clear. It authorised the claimant’s detention “until produced at court on the next hearing date”, … It is a matter of concern that this was not noticed by any of Serco’s staff, the custody officer responsible for the claimant’s detention at Southwark Police Station, the relevant staff at HMP Chelmsford or those who received him into custody at HMP Wandsworth and declined to release him thereafter. 34 Second, a person who complains of unlawful detention does not have to show that there is no authority to detain him. Once it is shown that he is being detained, the detaining authority has to show that there is authority to detain him. That is so whether the complaint is made by application for a writ of Habeas Corpus or by a claim for false imprisonment. This is not just a procedural quirk. It is central to the protection accorded by the common law to the liberty of the subject. The way this case was dealt with suggests that this fundamental point is not understood by some of those responsible for detaining prisoners. … In each case, the question should have been “Can we show that there is a legal authority to detain?”, not “Can we show that someone has authorised release?” 35 A third and related point is that Prison Service instructions and policies concerning the steps to be completed prior to release no doubt serve a useful function, but the need to comply with them is not a lawful ground for detention. Again, staff seem to have thought that, because the relevant checks could not be completed before Monday, they were obliged to continue to detain the claimant until then. This was not lawful. When remand prisoners are taken to court, prison staff must ensure either that checks to see whether there are other authorities to detain are carried out beforehand (as Ms Ellis says happens when time allows), or, at the very least, that staff are available by telephone and have the records they need to carry out the necessary checks immediately upon acquittal. Once a prisoner is acquitted, it may be that the prisoner can be lawfully detained for the short time necessary to process and release him in an orderly fashion. On no view, however, should he be detained overnight, let alone over a weekend, to enable such processing to take place. 36 Fourth, the way in which Ms Musa’s legitimate enquiries were dealt with leaves a good deal to be desired. Ms Musa says that a member of Serco staff was in court when the claimant was found not guilty and the presiding justice said he would be released within 30 minutes. It is unclear why that member of staff was unable to pass this on, particularly if, as HMCTS records suggest, that member of staff had been given a hand-written “end of custody note”
“The officer … initially refused to provide any details for the duty governor, but when it was explained that we would be making an application to the High Court should I not be able to speak to the duty governor and resolve the issue he said he would try and speak to them. I was then put on hold so that he could speak to a duty governor. On his return I was told that the duty governor was not able to speak to me and nothing could be done by the prison until the morning of17 January 2024 , as the OMU had finished work at 17:00 and they process all releases.”
“19.5 Further, it is extraordinary that a solicitor’s insistence that a prisoner was being unlawfully detained and that, absent his immediate release, an out-of-hours Habeas Corpus application would be made to a High Court Judge does not appear to have met the threshold of seriousness to trouble the duty governor. Instead the complaint appears to have been met with institutional indifference. … 22. For the avoidance of doubt: 22.1 It is neither lawful nor acceptable to detain prisoners for a further 24 hours after there ceases to be any lawful basis for their continued detention. 22.2 It is incumbent on the prison service to ensure that pre-release checks are completed speedily. The onus is always on the prison service to establish that there are grounds for further detention, and not upon the prisoner to establish his or her entitlement to release. 22.3 Prisons must be able to respond urgently to lawyers properly raising questions as to the lawfulness of continued detention. Governors are responsible for the management of their prisons and it is not acceptable to ignore Habeas Corpus applications or to regard them as an inconvenience that can be addressed during office hours or delegated to the OMU. 22.4 Court orders and writs of Habeas Corpus must be strictly complied with and treated with greater seriousness than has been evident in this case.”