1 week Ago By Evening Standard
One of the founding members of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion has been denied a home curfew, with probation staff reportedly citing “increased level of media interest” in the activist for not releasing him from jail. Roger Hallam was jailed for five years for organising protesters to disrupt traffic by climbing onto gantries over the M25 for four successive days in November 2022. Over the four days, 45 protesters climbed structures above the motorway, forcing the police to stop traffic.
The protests led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was more than £1.1 million, and prosecutors claimed it caused more than 50,000 hours of vehicle delay, affecting more than 700,000 vehicles, and left the M25 “compromised” for more than 120 hours. Last month, Hallam’s sentence, thought to be the longest ever for peaceful but unlawful protest in British history, was reduced on appeal by a year.
He was told by a probation officer that he could expect to be released from custody on March 24 this year, as the appeal meant he became eligible for home detention curfew. But the Times reports that days before that date, a prison officer informed the climate activist his application had been rejected and he was instead moved from a category D prison to a category C jail. When he asked about the decision, Hallam was reportedly told it was due to “accommodation and publications”.
Hallam then received an email from a probation officer, Seraphina Evans, saying that she had recommended against his release because of the “increased level of media interest you have accrued since the beginning of your custodial sentence”. Evans added: “I want to assure you that it is not my desire to prevent you from having a voice, nor am I setting you up to fail. However, given the media interest you have gathered, I cannot assess [home detention curfew] as suitable.
” In November, Hallam was reprimanded for recording a podcast while in prison, but his supporters have insisted he had stopped immediately and that he had not been told his general behaviour had been a problem. In a statement, the law firm Bhatt Murphy, which represents Hallam, said that “at a time of serious overcrowding in the prison system, it is extremely disappointing that our client remains in prison”. The Times reported that prison officials dispute that Hallam was denied home detention because of media interest and that instead the decision was taken because he had broken prison rules.
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