“Prisoner rights triumph as blanket legal correspondence searches ruled unlawful”
Derek Daly, a Category A prisoner, challenged the prison policy of examining legal correspondence in the absence of prisoners. The policy applied blanket searches without individual assessment of necessity or allowing prisoners to be present during examination.
Whether the prison policy of examining prisoners' legally privileged correspondence in their absence was compatible with Article 8 ECHR and what standard of review courts should apply under the Human Rights Act 1998.
The House of Lords allowed the appeal, finding the policy violated Article 8 ECHR as it was not justified as necessary in a democratic society and failed the proportionality test.
This case fundamentally changed judicial review by establishing proportionality as the appropriate standard for human rights cases and strengthening protection for prisoners' rights to legal privilege.
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OSCOLA Citation
R (Daly) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2001] UKHL 26, [2001] 2 AC 532
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