A prisoner’s detention in solitary confinement in England for more than two years has been “wholly unnecessary” and has made him suicidal, the high court has heard.
Kevan Thakrar, 36, who is serving a life sentence for murder and attempted murder after being convicted on a joint enterprise basis in October 2008, is challenging his solitary confinement, claiming it is unlawful.
He has spent 749 consecutive days – and five of the last eight years – in a designated cell, totally isolated from other prisoners, within a high-security close supervision centre (CSC), a judge was told on Tuesday.
Opening Thakrar’s judicial review in London against Alex Chalk, the new justice secretary, Nick Armstrong KC said in written submissions: “He remains locked up on his own for more than 22 hours a day; he cannot associate with any other prisoner; he has no access to corporate [non-solitary] worship; he cannot work and he cannot attend education classes; he can exercise alone in a cage, he has no access to a gym.
“C [the claimant] feels that his transfer to segregation was an ‘unofficial punishment’ which felt as though it was designed to ‘break him’ – it caused him to have suicidal thoughts. Being held in these conditions is causing C to experience helplessness and despair on an ongoing basis.”
Thakrar, who watched proceedings via video link from HMP Belmarsh, was originally placed in a CSC after he used force against prison officers at HMP Frankland in March 2010. Armstrong said this continued to be cited as a justification for the conditions in which his client was held, despite the fact that Thakrar was acquitted at trial by a jury who accepted that his use of force against officers was reasonable and lawful because he anticipated an assault on him.
He said prison staff “reacted furiously to the acquittal”, and added: “The concern is that this has become an enduring source of serious resentment which has coloured the Prison Service’s attitude towards C ever since.”
Armstrong told the court there had been a failure to comply with the requirement to regularly review Thakrar’s segregation, and the reasons given for his solitary confinement were confused, inconsistent and arbitrary. These included alleged “non-engagement”, particularly with psychologists, which Armstrong claimed “can never be a proper basis for prolonged solitary confinement, and the policy which permits that is unlawful”.
The barrister said it was also alleged that Thakrar was disruptive when on a main CSC unit – not in solitary – despite the fact that his client had been attacked by other prisoners and not responded with violence. Armstrong cited a November judgment against the Ministry of Justice, which led to it paying damages to Thakrar, a practising Muslim, for failing to protect him from racial and religiously motivated abuse and assaults by other CSC prisoners between 2012 and 2019, and failing to investigate such incidents.
The court heard that another reason used to justify Thakrar’s solitary confinement was an indirect comment he is said to have made about a prison offender manager in April 2021. Armstrong said Thakrar denied the allegation, which was never formally proved and was “obviously incapable of justifying two years and counting of solitary confinement”.
Thakrar, whom psychologists have assessed as suffering from PTSD – although the defendant disputes this – is asking the judge to rule that his human rights have been breached and order that he be transferred out of solitary confinement.
In oral submissions, Armstrong told Mrs Justice McGowan: “This is one of the dark places where the spotlight is not shone very often … That’s what we are asking you to do.”
The defence will make its submissions on Wednesday.
