LONDON: Prisons in England and Wales on Friday began to free 900 of some of their most troublesome inmates in the wake of a human rights ruling that governors’ punishment hearings were illegal.

The UK Home Office is bracing itself for compensation claims which could run into millions from prisoners who have illegally had up to six weeks added to their sentences for each disciplinary offence they have been convicted of inside jail. The prison population in England and Wales hit a record high of 71,723 before the mass early release programme began on Friday. The figure represented an increase of more than 220 on the week with 185 “locked out” in police cells.

About 80,000 “added days” are imposed on inmates by governors each year and compensation claims for unlawful imprisonment could cover punishments going back to the implementation of the Human Rights Act in the UK two years ago.

The prison service for England and Wales confirmed it would not appeal against the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights and had started to release “about 900 inmates”. Most of those released were serving an extra 28 days or less but there some isolated cases of inmates who had been awarded 233 added days and one inmate who had been given 362 added days.

The Strasbourg court made its landmark ruling last week that it was a breach of the right to a fair trial under article six of the European convention on human rights for a prison governor to sit as “judge and jury” in internal prison disciplinary hearings for offences that would be considered criminal outside prison.

John Dickinson, the lawyer who took the case to Strasbourg on behalf of two British prisoners said on Friday that there were grounds for compensation: “Under English law wrongful imprisonment often results in compensation and it would be appropriate for it to be available to prisoners who suffer such detention.”

The prison service is now considering an alternative internal disciplinary system, possibly us-ing a panel of independent legal-ly qualified people.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.