ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 considers the existing legal and non-legal rules which govern segregation in English prisons. Through an analysis of case law, the chapter demonstrates the ways in which segregation has been challenged by prisoners in the past, and how procedural complaints are more successful than substantive treatment complaints. This chapter identifies how the rule of law is limited in the prison context, by the court’s narrow construction of human rights, as well as judicial preference for procedural justice (over substantive justice), and judicial deference to prison authorities. It highlights how prisoners’ rights are narrowly construed and can be constrained by the behaviour of the individual and by the very fact of imprisonment. This chapter reviews and challenges the division in the existing literature – the fissures between criminological and legal scholarship – and suggests that, to properly explore how law is understood, used and experienced in segregation units, the ‘gap’ between law and criminology must be bridged. Thus, a socio-legal research approach is put forward as the best framework for this ‘bridge’ and this research (and underpins much of this book).
