Prison staff lost man's legal papers

What happened

In summer 2011, prison staff took legal papers from Mr L's cell because they thought the amount of paper he had was a fire risk. A prison officer told Mr L that a bag with some of his papers had split, so staff had put some papers in a new bag, which was given a new seal number. The officer gave Mr L the new number on a post-it note. When Mr L tried to get the papers, the prison could not find the bag.

Mr L mentioned the lost documents to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) when he complained to it about another issue concerning his legal papers. The PPO did not uphold that complaint.

When Mr L complained to the prison, it suggested he speak to the officer who had told him the bag had split and who had given him the details of the new seal number for the bag the documents had been transferred to. Mr L spoke to the officer, but the bag with the documents could not be found.

Mr L then wrote to the PPO about its decision on his other complaint and said that officers at the prison had deliberately lost some of his legal documents.

What we found

We partly upheld this complaint. Mr L did not expressly put his complaint about the bags containing his legal documents going missing to the PPO. We have therefore found no failings in how the PPO looked at this matter.

We upheld the complaint about the National Offender Management Service, which oversees the prison.

The prison did not handle Mr L's case in line with the relevant Prison Service Instruction on how prisons should deal with complaints from prisoners. Although Mr L provided all necessary information for a thorough search for the missing bag, the prison failed to search properly. If the prison had made appropriate enquiries in summer 2011, even if staff could not find the bag and the prison could not find out what had happened, Mr L would not have felt that his complaint had been ignored. Instead, the prison's handling of Mr L's complaint was so poor that he may have lost the opportunity to have his complaint resolved appropriately. This caused Mr L unnecessary distress, as well as inconveniencing him when he had to bring his complaint to his MP and to us.

Putting it right

Mr L wanted his documents back. Because of the time that had passed since the documents went missing, and because the prison had undertaken searches for the documents, we accept that they had been lost and the prison could not return them.

The prison apologised to Mr L for the loss of the documents and for failing to investigate the complaint thoroughly. It also paid Mr L £200 in recognition of the frustration, distress, inconvenience and lost opportunity to have his complaint resolved appropriately.