The school of hard knocks

Why have 24 law students been dispatched to Wormwood Scrubs prison? To set up a legal clinic - and to get a taste of how the law works on the ground.

Law students are leaving their lecture theatres to help prisoners enforce their legal rights. Twenty four students have set up a legal assistance clinic at Wormwood Scrubs where they have advised convicted criminals, including lifers, on their rights under social security and housing legislation.

Law students are leaving their lecture theatres to help prisoners enforce their legal rights. Twenty four students have set up a legal assistance clinic at Wormwood Scrubs where they have advised convicted criminals, including lifers, on their rights under social security and housing legislation.

The scheme has become so successful that prison staff now want the students to step up their visits to three times a week.

The community-based project has its roots in the American street law initiatives of the 1960s where US universities provide legal representation in all kinds of cases, including prisoners on death row and multi-million-dollar environmental claims. More recently the term has been popularised in John Grisham's novel, The Street Lawyer.

The British project is just as ambitious and is capable of referring prisoners to the students' pro bono unit, which can prepare and take cases all the way to court.

Because the unit is run like a solicitors' practice, and the students can be sued if they get the law wrong, all the cases are supervised by qualified lawyers so that the college is properly insured against negligence claims. But Richard Grimes, the College of Law lecturer and solicitor heading the project, said that the secret of the scheme's success was that students, prisoners and warders were all getting something out of the relationship.

But he emphasised that although there may be one or two prisoners who might need individual legal help, the purpose of the project was to provide "general legal awareness" and give students a taste of how law works on the ground.

Nevertheless, the students will have to be careful that they are not being taken advantage of. In the past, prisoners have been known to spend their time inside exploring imaginative ways of using the legal system to win compensation. In July, the High Court rejected a claim by Gavin Mellor, a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder, that he had the right to start a family by artificial insemination.

Litigious inmates at the top-security Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire are mounting so many claims that a special court has been set up to reduce the cost of ferrying them to the local town. The killer Michael Sams and other category A prisoners at the jail have brought a string of cases against the Home Office in the past year. One even sued because he missed breakfast.

Sams, currently serving four life sentences for murdering Julie Dart and kidnapping the estate agent Stephanie Slater, issued proceedings against Whitemoor in January for the loss of his personal paintings. The Home Office awarded him £3,548 in the settlement, which included loss of earnings for prison work while he was being held in a segregation unit. Last year he sued Woodhill Prison for £5,000 because his bed was too hard.

Some inmates have studied law books to become experts in judicial procedure and embark on long litigations to while away their sentences. Others see a court case as a chance for a day out of prison.

Mr Grimes said that his students had to be careful not "to raise the prisoners' expectations unfairly". He said that although some of the students were clearly shaken by their first experience of life inside, they had adjusted quickly to provide useful information to the prisoners. Initially, they have been involved in advising groups of prisoners on the newly enacted Human Rights legislation, which incorporates the European Convention.

Sandra Villani, 31, one of the students from the College of Law in London, who has twice visited Wormwood Scrubs, said prisoners were keen to know if the Human Rights Act 1998 would change the conditions of their imprisonment.

A recent report by the Prison Reform Trust found that prisoners could win the right to vote and even give television interviews under the new Act, which was brought into force last month. The Trust also warned that "many of the Prison Service's policies and practices are in danger of violating the Act".

Ms Villani said: "They [the prisoners] have heard a lot about human rights and want to know whether it will affect them in a big way. But we told them that it would not necessarily make a huge impact."

Where it is more likely to bring about change, she says, is in internal discipline at the prison, which would have to comply with the right to an independent and impartial hearing.

Other concerns for the prisoners centred on life after release. Alex Riley, 21, another London student, said that the inmates were keen to know about their convictions and how they would affect employment or benefits when they left prison.

"After the first visit, I spent a lot of time looking up the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act to see when some of the prisoners' sentences became spent," added Ms Villani.

Many of the Jamaican prisoners convicted of drug smuggling offences asked for help in repatriating them to Jamaica. "We had to tell them that because Jamaica did not have a separate treaty with Britain, each case would have to be dealt with individually on its own merits," said Mr Grimes.

Prison visits are only part of project. In the run-up to Christmas, 20 staff and students will act as volunteers giving legal advice to homeless people. Another 12 students are to visit a detoxification centre in Lambeth, south London.

While some universities have carried out street law project pilots, the College of Law is the first national programme of its kind.

The benefits are clear to all those involved. "It's a wake-up call to the realities of the profession and puts it in perspective," says Ms Villani.