Brit prisoner wins right to make tea in cell

London - A prisoner has won the right to a keep a thermos flask of hot tea overnight after the new Prisons and Probation Ombudsman said that it was good for his health and that he deserved “decent treatment.”

Nigel Newcomen CBE, who had been appointed the new Prisons and Probation Ombudsman by Justice Secretary Ken Clarke in September 2011, took up the unnamed prisoner’s case after hearing he had been denied access to hot drinks in his cell, the Daily Mail reported.

Newcomen agreed that banning access to hot drinks was in breach of the rules on how prisoners should be kept in prison.

The National Offender Management Service has now accepted the recommendation and agreed that prisoners should be provided with tea-making facilities at night if they ask for them.

Writing in prison’s magazine ‘Inside Time’ this week, Newcomen said that he was ‘proud’ to take on the role as ombudsman, which was set up in 1994 to provide an “independent adjudicator of prisoner complaints.”

Explaining his reasoning for taking on prisoner A’s case Mr Newcomen said: ‘He complained that he was not able to make a hot drink when he was locked up overnight (for 12 to 15 hours depending on the day of the week).

“In my view, both health and decent treatment required that prisoners should be able to make a hot drink when they are locked up for that long,” Newcomen said.

“I was pleased that the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) accepted the recommendation - and the cost implications - that the prison should provide prisoners with vacuum flasks or in-cell kettles for this purpose,” he added.

But not everyone has been happy with the prisoner’s winning this right.

Speaking to The Telegraph about the proposals one prison source said: “It’s all very well to be a friend to the prisoner, but surely it’s hardly a human right to have a cup of tea at night. Prisoners aren’t meant to be in hotel rooms with room service. They are there to be punished.”