Privacy Policy

Who we are

Prison Law Assist ("we", "us", "our") is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We're based in Cardiff and provide prison law advice to prisoners and their families across the UK. You can contact us about anything in this policy at contact@prisonlawassist.com or 029 2169 0211.

The information we collect

When you contact us by phone, WhatsApp, email or our contact form, we collect the details you provide, such as your name, contact details, and information about the matter you're contacting us about. Where you're contacting us about a prisoner, this will usually include details about that person, their sentence, and the circumstances of their case, provided with their signed authority to act on their behalf where required.

Where you use our contact form, the details you enter are sent to us and to Netlify, our website and forms hosting provider, who process it as our data processor in order to deliver it to us.

Criminal offence data

Prison law advice necessarily involves information about criminal convictions, sentences and offences, which UK GDPR treats as a special category of data requiring extra care. We process this only where it's necessary to give you advice, represent you or a prisoner, or otherwise establish, exercise or defend a legal right or claim, under the "legal claims" condition set out in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018. We don't process criminal offence data for any purpose beyond providing our services to you.

How we use your information and our lawful basis

We use the information you give us to respond to your enquiry, provide advice, and, where you instruct us, to act on your or a prisoner's behalf. We do this either because it's necessary to provide the service you've asked for, or because we have a legitimate interest in responding to enquiries about our services, which we've weighed against your right to privacy. We don't sell your information to third parties, and we don't use automated decision-making or profiling that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you.

Who we share it with

Where we act for you or a prisoner, we may share relevant details with prisons, HMPPS, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, the Ministry of Justice, courts or tribunals, and other bodies as necessary to progress your case, and with other professional advisers where we jointly instruct them on your behalf. We also use a small number of service providers who process data for us: Netlify (website hosting and our contact form), and, with your consent, Google (Tag Manager, Analytics and Ads, covered under Cookies below). Some of these providers may process data outside the UK; where they do, they're required to protect it under an approved international transfer mechanism, such as the UK-US Data Bridge or standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

Where an enquiry doesn't go on to become an active matter, we keep your details for up to 12 months, in case you get back in touch, and then delete them. Where we act for you, we keep your file for 6 years after your matter concludes, in line with standard practice for legal advice records and to cover the usual limitation period for any related claim, before securely deleting it.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to: ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you (a subject access request); ask us to correct inaccurate data; ask us to delete your data, or restrict how we use it, in some circumstances; object to processing based on our legitimate interests; and ask for data you've given us in a structured format, where that's technically possible. Some of these rights are more limited for data we need to keep to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim, such as an open or recently closed case file.

To make any of these requests, contact us at contact@prisonlawassist.com. We aim to respond to a subject access request within one calendar month; if your request is complex, we may extend this by up to a further two months, and we'll tell you if we need to do this.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We'd appreciate the chance to put things right first, so please contact us before you do.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file stored on your device by your browser. This site uses cookies in two ways:

• Strictly necessary. One cookie (pla_consent) remembers whether you accepted or rejected optional cookies, so we don't ask you again on every page. It holds no personal information and expires after six months.
• Measurement and advertising (optional). With your consent, we use Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and Google Ads to understand how visitors find and use the site, and whether an enquiry, call or WhatsApp click followed one of our adverts. These services may set cookies such as _ga, _gcl_au and _gcl_aw, and Google processes the resulting data under its own privacy policy. If you reject optional cookies, these cookies are not set. Google may still receive anonymous, cookieless signals about page views, which cannot identify you.

You can change your choice at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer of any page, or by clearing cookies in your browser.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example if our services or the law change. We'll update the date at the top of this page when we do.

Contact us about this policy

If you have any questions about how we handle your data, contact us at contact@prisonlawassist.com.