R (Gourlay) v Secretary of State for Justice
[2016] EWHC 1957 (Admin)
03 Aug 2016
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The High Court has handed down Judgment in a claim concerning an alleged systemic failure by the Government to provide (or create) courses enabling prisoners who maintain innocence of their offences to progress through the prison system and ultimately be released.
The Court has rejected the challenge, concluding that there has been no systemic failure to provide such prisoners with a reasonable opportunity to rehabilitate themselves; and that the Claimant himself was provided with a reasonable opportunity to do so.
The case is one of the first to examine, in the context of ‘deniers’, the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in R (Kaiyam and others) v Secretary of State for Justice [2015] AC 1344, in which the duty to provide an opportunity for rehabilitation reasonable in all of the circumstances was said to be implicit within Article 5 of the ECHR.
David Pievsky acted for the Secretary of State for Justice.
