The Outer House of the Court of Session in Scotland has denied a challenge from two convicted paedophiles against the Scottish Prison Service’s refusal to facilitate inter-prison visits. The men based their legal challenge in Article 8 and Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), claiming they were in a homosexual relationship and the rejection of visitation rights breached their right to respect for family life and the grounds for refusal were discriminatory in nature.
The applicants were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 having been convicted of murder and various other sexual offences. The two had made several requests to visit one another based upon rule 63(8) of the Prisons and Young Offenders Institutions (Scotland) Rules 2011 which outlines a prisoner is entitled to visit a fellow prisoner in a different prison facility in ‘exceptional circumstances’. The prison services denied their requests on the basis their circumstances did not meet the ‘exceptional’ threshold.
Considering the prisoners’ rights to respect for family life, the Court sought to determine whether their life together had been of sufficient quality to engage the protections offered under Article 8. Lord Stewart assessed the applicants’ quality of relationship as being sufficiently evidenced by the crimes that they had been convicted of, stating that their life together had been so negative that it did not engage, did not attract the support of and did not merit the protection of the provisions of Article 8.
The applicants’ claims of discrimination under Article 14 were also denied. The judge stated that since there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that the prisoners had been discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality at any stage of the process, their inter-prison visits had been denied on independent grounds that did not incorporate their sexual orientation.
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