The High Court has refused John Foy’s application for judicial review of Cloverhill Prison’s general practice of screened visits, which prevent prisoners and visitors from having physical contact.
Mr Justice Charleton delivered the judgment on 29 June 2010. Foy was on remand at Cloverhill when he challenged the restrictions, but was later convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to a lengthy term. The court considered his claim in relation to the period when he was presumed innocent in law.
Foy argued that preventing physical contact with family members undermined family rights protected by Article 41 of the Constitution. The judge said Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights added nothing relevant to the case.
Under the Prison Rules 2007, prison governors may allow physical contact if satisfied it would not facilitate the entry of drugs or other prohibited items. The judgment said governors could also require visits to take place without contact. The governor’s discretion remained subject to judicial review, but the court would intervene only where a decision infringed a surviving right and was fundamentally unreasonable.
The governor’s affidavit said screened visits were Cloverhill’s norm because contact visits could enable smuggling, a problem he described as particularly acute in a remand prison. He said contact visits could still be applied for and were allowed by exception. Foy had received one box visit after applying. The court said the security evidence was uncontradicted and the evidence before it was one-sided. It also found no expert evidence that physical contact between an imprisoned father and children was essential to the family’s constitutional rights.
The judge acknowledged that remand prisoners could face more restrictions on contact visits than sentenced prisoners in other prisons. But he held that balancing family rights against prison management was primarily for the governor, provided decisions were within the Rules and not arbitrary, discriminatory or wholly unreasonable.
The court found Cloverhill’s general policy could not be regarded as unreasonable in light of the problems described. It noted that the system retained flexibility for contact visits where security risks were sufficiently low and staffing and facilities allowed. The application for judicial review was refused. The judgment did not establish an unconditional right to contact visits, nor did it prevent individual applications for them.