OU’s Legal Eagles on Prison Radio

Hugh McFaul, Open Justice Centre and Sarah Couling, OU law student outside HMP Altcourse with BBC Radio 4 journalist Joshua Rozenberg after recording for Law in Action.

At HERC we publish blog articles covering a wide range of issues that broadly relate to harm, evidence, crime and justice. In keeping with the critical position of HERC, our aim is to highlight all sides of the debate and to facilitate a discussion so that all voices are heard on the issue.

In ‘Beyond the Gates’ Steve Tombs and Zoe Walkington highlight the important role The OU has played in opening up educational opportunities to students in prison. Of course, this longstanding commitment to providing access to higher education goes to the heart of the OU’s founding ideals of being open to people, places, methods and ideas. However, it also provides a great foundation to develop innovative ways in which OU students studying inside and outside prison can work together. An innovative example of this is the Open Justice Prison Radio Project Legal Eagles which features on this week’s Radio 4 Law in Action programme.

The project was established by the Open Justice Centre  in 2017 and brings OU law students into HMP Altcourse to work with prisoners to promote public legal education. Students travel to the prison in north Liverpool to agree legal topics that will be dealt with in a special Legal Eagles broadcast on the HMP Altcourse radio station. The production of the programme is a collaborative effort, with OU law students leading on researching answers to the prisoners’ legal questions and the prison radio team using their skills on the production of the broadcast. Participants in the project feature in the Law in Action programme which gives an important insight into the strength of the relationship between The OU and educators working in prisons.

Legal Eagles is one of several Open Justice prison projects which aim to provide opportunities for learners based inside and outside prison to collaborate on public legal education projects. We have been working with the St. Giles Trust since 2017 to provide support to prison-based peer advisors. The St Giles programme involves final year OU law students making up to four prison visits to work with groups of Peer Advisors, under the supervision of qualified lawyers, to identify and research areas of law that relevant and useful to the wider prison population.

Recent examples include:

• In HMP Send, OU students developed a housing toolkit that included information about current housing legislation. This was a useful, practical and quality resource package that the Peer Advisors use to provide specific and in-depth housing advice to other prisoners. Prisoners do not have access to the Internet so a toolkit like this is especially useful.

• In HMP Cardiff, the topic chosen by the Peer Advisors was family law, including issues around contact orders – This was particularly useful as many male prisoners are estranged from their families and need advice and support on how to re-connect on their release.

• In HMP High Down, the project concentrated on producing resources that enabled the Peer Advisors to give advice on IPP sentences, licence conditions and the parole process, all areas of advice very much in demand in that prison.

The Open Justice Centre’s partnership work with the St Giles Trust has been shortlisted for a national pro bono award.

A key aspect of the success of the project has been the truly collaborative nature of the work undertaken by OU students and the prison-based Peer Advisors:

The Open Justice students have given our Peer Advisors in the prisons a real opportunity to develop, learn and become more professional but more than anything they have provided a forum where students and prisoners can meet as equals, learn from each other and discuss a whole range of relevant issues. The sessions I have observed have been the liveliest and most stimulating I have ever witnessed inside a prison.

(St. Giles project leader)

OU students have responded very well to the challenge of taking part in the project and have described the experience as transformative:

I didn’t anticipate, the effect that this journey that I was about to embark upon would have upon my life as both a law student and a person.  My fellow students, The Open University tutor, the inmates who we worked with and the staff at the prison, made this experience one that I will never forget, and the experience is a must for any law student.

(OU law student participant)

Programmes are planned in six prisons in England and Wales for Spring 2020 and, subject to funding, we plan to in the increase the number of prisons included in the project in 2021.

Hugh McFaul is Director of the Open Justice Centre and Senior Lecturer in The Open University Law School.