For most people in prison, adjusting to the daily routine of prison life is no small thing. For someone who is new to English or in the early stages of English language learning, who may also be very far from home and potentially in a different country from their family and friends, the impact is even more profound.

The language barriers faced by people in prison who are new to English in the criminal justice system can cause them to become invisible, excluded, disadvantaged, and disempowered. How do these barriers manifest themselves and what steps can prison staff take to support people in prison to overcome them?

The number of people in prison who speak English as a Second or Additional Language (ESL)  is not recorded as standard, so people who are new to English or need language support can often become invisible.

This risk of invisibility in turn means that these people in prison become isolated. For example: 

• They can be isolated from forming supportive relationships with peers or staff.  
• They can often feel excluded from the prison regime because they can’t understand what’s happening.  
• Additionally, they may be separated from family and friends who could be abroad. 
• They may feel scared and vulnerable due to immigration issues. 

All of these factors can lead to poor mental health, for which services are mostly available only in English. This is highlighted in an account by Shelley, a prisoner who served her sentence in different institutions and provided peer language support to other women:  

A lot of [women] suffer severe depression. Yes, the prisons supply and serve people in prison with mental health groups and practitioners, but the practitioners all speak English. So, when you have got a foreign national woman that can’t speak English and desperately needs help with their mental health, what are they meant to do?

Disadvantaged

ESL speakers who face a language barrier also face more barriers to progressing through a sentence plan or engaging in purposeful activity compared to their English-speaking peers. Because many services and interventions are English-only, ESL speakers are effectively barred from accessing them. These include services such as:

• Rehabilitative interventions (which may be part of a sentence plan);
• Accessing information and support from providers in prisons such as charities contracted to deliver housing support;
• Therapeutic, physical, or social activities that may be inaccessible due to informal language barriers.

These issues are further underlined by the following quote from a probation officer who was interviewed as part of research into language barriers in the criminal justice system:

When it actually comes to interventions with those with limited English, I think there is still a deficit, I think we would accept that and accredited programmes, domestic abuse programmes, skills programmes aren’t available for foreign national offenders.

Disempowered

People who speak ESL can feel disempowered in their own journey to rehabilitation and justice, partly due to reasons listed above, but also because they are unlikely to be able to properly engage with legal proceedings unless they have a lawyer who is particularly knowledgeable on what language support is available, and dedicates a lot of time to include and support their client with their language needs.

ESL speakers may not have the language proficiency to access legal books in prison libraries that are used by others to build cases to support their appeals or complaints, effectively disempowering these people in prison from advocating for themselves.

What does it feel like?

Here, Shelley describes how difficult it is to get language support in prison:

To have an interpreter, you have to write an application, which is basically an A4 piece of paper. …So, you can imagine that these women firstly don’t understand English and don’t know what an application is, and being told repeatedly by officers and governors and whoever else [you need to fill out an application]. So the issue here is that obviously, if you can’t speak English and you don’t understand it, how on earth are you then meant to put an application in?

Although there are various rights and entitlements to language support for those held in prison (for example, people in prison have the right to be informed in a language they understand about prison regulations, the regime, the range of health and education services available, and any disciplinary action against them), we know that even with the best intentions, limited time and resource often means that in reality, not all of these are consistently upheld.

What can prison staff do to help?

As we’ve seen, people in prison who are new to English are in a particularly vulnerable position, but with the right support, some of the effects of these language barriers can be reduced. So, if you work in a prison, what can you do to support those affected by language barriers? 

Familiarise yourself with the language support available. This might include:

• Translation services, such as The Big Word. Are people in prison who need this service getting access in accordance with their rights? If not, is there someone you can speak to about this?
• ESOL provision. Are those who need it able to access it at the right level?
• Bilingual dictionaries and other resources in the library. Bear in mind that not all learners are literate in their home language, so further support may be needed.
• Coracle Inside containing self-study materials from The Bell Foundation. These may be useful to supplement ESOL classes for learners with the relevant literacy skills. Talk to the Prison Education Manager for more information about Coracle Inside laptops and accessing our materials. If for any reason you can’t find The Bell Foundation materials on the Coracle Laptops, please get in touch via the Contact Us form on our website.

Make sure that your own communication is clear and easy to understand for those who are new to English. For example:

• Slow your speech down. For someone who is new to English, fast speech is impossible to follow. Words sometimes blend together and learners need time to recognise and process the language.
• Be patient. We don’t realise that when we ask questions, we often wait less than a second for a response. Research suggests that when asking questions in classrooms, there should be a wait time of 3-5 seconds, and that if we’re asking a question which involves more complex thought processing, a wait time of 6-10 seconds is needed, which can feel like a long time in the moment. This wait time is important for learners who are new to English as they need to both translate what they hear, process that, and then formulate a response, which also needs to be translated.

For more information on how to adjust your language to make it more comprehensible for people in prison who speak ESL, enrol onto our free, on-demand course: Communicating with People in Prison who speak English as an Additional Language.

The course is one hour long, and can be completed in your own time. The course explores specific features of spoken English that can cause a barrier to understanding, and provides opportunities to practice using strategies to communicate clearly.

Explore our new course here