Ministry of Justice failed to contact Family about featuring their story in a documentary

What happened

The MOJ was approached by a television company about making a documentary featuring prisoners. The MOJ gave permission for the documentary and asked one of its agencies (the agency) to contact the prisoners' victims to see if they had any objection to their stories being featured.

Family E were among the victims. However, the agency failed to contact them. In part, this was because the agency wrongly believed it did not have contact details for Family E. But mainly because the agency did not think Family E would want to be reminded of the incident that led to the original imprisonment.

The agency asked the MOJ not to allow Family E's story to be included in the documentary. However, the MOJ told the agency that lack of contact was not enough reason to withdraw the family's story. The filming went ahead.

The documentary was broadcast without Family E's knowledge and they were deeply distressed when they saw it.

What we found

The MOJ could and should have done more to contact Family E and tell them about the documentary. We also found that if Family E had been told about the documentary, they could have prevented their story from being featured.

We accepted that the agency had thought it was acting in Family E's best interests by deciding not to try to contact them originally. However, we felt the agency should have realised the position had changed when the MOJ made clear that, despite the agency's objections, the family's story would still appear in the finished documentary.

We accepted the MOJ had genuinely believed Family E could not be contacted. However, we felt the MOJ should have considered more carefully the likely impact on Family E of seeing the documentary without being told about it beforehand.

Putting it right

Before we began our investigation, the MOJ had already made changes to its processes as a result of Family E's complaint. The MOJ had decided that, in future, it would always attempt to contact victims and would only allow a victim's story to be featured in a documentary if the victim, or their family, had consented to this. We welcomed the general action the MOJ had taken, but felt it had not done enough to remedy the injustice caused to Family E. In line with our recommendations the MOJ apologised to Family E and paid them £10,000 in recognition of the distress its error had caused them.