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1. Do prisoners keep all their Convention rights, some or none?
Prisoners keep all their Convention rights but the application and effect of these rights will take into account the normal restraints and treatment that is the consequence of lawful imprisonment. Article 5(1)(a) permits deprivation of liberty when a person has been properly convicted, so the right to liberty is not breached by lawful imprisonment.
2. What are the duties, based on the ECHR, on the Prison Service, the government, and the courts in respect of murders and suicides in prisons?
The authorities have positive duties to do what is necessary (in the context of the individual’s circumstances and subject the normal view that positive duties do not impose unreasonable demands on the authorities) to ensure that the right to life is respected. In respect of murders and suicides this can mean (a) that the substantive right may have been breached; but also, and even if the murder was not caused by a breach of the substantive limb of Article 2, (b) a duty to hold a proper and independent investigation.
3. How do Article 3 and Article 8 relate to the application of any policy allowing seclusion of prisoners?
Article 3 would be breached if the conditions of seclusion passed the threshold of severity so as to breach Article 3. Significant seclusion, of itself, may engage Article 8(1) as being an interference with “private life”. In that case the authorities will have to justify the seclusion in terms of its lawfulness, its purpose and its proportionality (under Article 8(2)).
4. What impact does Article 6 have on the procedures for disciplining prisoners?
Prisoners retain their rights to a fair hearing but what that right requires will take into account the needs of lawful imprisonment. If the purpose of a disciplinary hearing is to impose a serious penalty on the prisoner (e.g. extra time in prison) the hearing may be determining a criminal charge in which case Article 6(3) applies which is more specific and stringent in its demands (e.g. on the right to be represented) – see Ezeh v United Kingdom.
5. Many prisoners are ill—what duties based on Convention rights does the Prison Service have towards them?
Since prisoners retain their Convention rights, they must be treated on the same principles as non-prisoners subject to recognition of the needs of lawful imprisonment. In particular an adult competent prisoner has a right to consent to treatment (Article 8), a right that treatment saves his or her life (Article 2) and does not leave him or her in an inhuman or degraded state (Article 3). The problems of balancing these rights with each other apply as much to prisoners as to others.