In the past years, His Majesty's Prison & Parole Service (HMPPS) has experienced a growth in the number of foreign national offenders (FNOs) who speak limited English or no English (Hunter et al., 2022). Studies to date show that inability to communicate may lead to increased rates of mental health problems, self-harm, and suicides among prisoners (Martínez-Gómez, 2018; Valero-Garcés, 2018) Unfortunately, little is known about language assistance offered by HMPPS.

In this presentation I will present preliminary findings from a research project that investigates, how prisons ensure language access to vital services such as healthcare, legal counselling, complaints procedures or education. I will draw from both survey data of prison staff as well as ethnographic data from prison visits conducted in cooperation with HMPPS Diversity & Inclusion throughout 2023 and 2024. Aimed to better understand how HMPs evaluate language needs, findings highlight several challenges that disproportionally affect FNOs with little or no English skills. These include a lack of language assistance around safeguarding, family visits, prison rules and communication by the Home Office as well as inconsistent support in legal communication, healthcare, training, resettlement and in learning English. Furthermore, there is a profound dissatisfaction with services provided by the contracted provider for interpreting- and translation services.

• Hunter, G. (2022). Language barriers in the criminal justice system. The Bell Foundation.
• Martínez-Gómez, A. (2018). Language, translation and interpreting policies in prisons: Protecting the rights of speakers of non-official languages. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 251. 151–172.
• Valero-Garcés, C. (2018). Language policy in prisons at the crossroads: The voice of foreign inmates. The Open Journal of Criminology and Sociology 1. 63–70.

This talk will be given by Dr Sebastian Muth (LAEL). Sebastian researches linguistic anthropology, critical sociolinguistics and language policy in a variety of social and political contexts. This includes ethnographic and discourse-analytical research at the intersection between language and political economy. His work investigates the commodity value of languages and speakers within neoliberalism and the reproduction of social inequalities through language.