Prison records of deceased person

[Knittingchamp]

Is it possible to gain access to prison records of a deceased person? I can't go into reasons why as it is very outing, but it is of a family member who died about 30 years ago. I'd appreciate any and all advice.

You can try. The Data Protection Act only withholds information relating to a living person.

Contact HMP and make the request.

Thank you!

Worth asking but, even though data protection legislation doesn't apply to personal data of deceased people, common law duties of confidentiality continue to apply after death.

I'm not sure what you mean by prison records either - prison records tend to be a mix of health records, social work records and HMP records, so you may need to contact more than one place to request access. It also may be the case that after such a long period of time no records about the individual are held - perhaps worth seeing if you can locate the Prisons record retention schedule to let you know how long records of the type you are looking for are held.

It's a complex area but ultimately whether you will be permitted access or not is likely to depend on a number of issues:

• whether the information was provided with an expectation of confidence
• whether you are the 'personal representative' of the deceased person (in which case you have rights of access to certain medical and social work records in certain circumstances)
• whether it is in the public interest to disclose information (to the extent that the public interest outweighs the individuals expectation of confidentiality)

It might therefore be worth thinking about how to explain why you want access and what the public interest is in disclosing it to you.