Get Out of Jail Fee

There's no such thing as a free lunch in British prisons...unless you're guilty:

Wrongly jailed after a woman cried rape, Warren Blackwell applied for compensation for his three wasted years in prison.

Torn from his family and sent to languish in jail as a convicted sex attacker, the innocent father-of-two imagined he was due a hefty sum for the miscarriage of justice.

Instead, he was flabbergasted to learn the Home Office now intends to charge him nearly £7,000 for "board and lodging".

The money is for the cost of food and accommodation while he was behind bars, and will be deducted from whatever compensation he receives for wrongly imprisonment.

....A spokesman said: "It has been standard practice to do this in miscarriage of justice cases since the Criminal Appeals Act 1995 came into force.

"The assessor usually deducts a small amount of rent and living expenses of being in prison from the much, much higher figure of the actual compensation."

The practice of charging "bed and breakfast" was challenged this year by the Bridgewater Three, the men wrongly convicted of murdering newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater in 1978.

But the [House of] Lords upheld the principle, meaning Mr Blackwell would have to go the European Court of Human Rights for any hope of overturning it.