Prison Rules in UK Law

Prisoners can make complaints to the visiting committee or board of visitors (see Rule 95) and petition the Secretary of State. If a prisoner has a well-founded complaint that a governor has misconstrued a prison rule and the Secretary of State has rejected his petition inviting attention to the misconstruction, he may be entitled to apply for judicial review of the Secretary of State's decision, the relief being in the form of a declaration as to what is the correct construction.

Equally, I have no doubt that an informed and fair-minded observer would regard prison governors, or their deputies, as being quite capable of interpreting and applying the prison rules fairly and independently, even though they are obviously committed to upholding them.

Under the Prison Rules remission of sentence is not a matter of right but of indulgence. So far as private law is concerned all that each appellant had was a legitimate expectation, based upon his knowledge of what is the general practice, that he would be granted the maximum remission, permitted by Rule 5(2) of the Prison Rules, of one-third of his sentence if by that time no disciplinary award of forfeiture of remission had been made against him.