The Association of Prison Lawyers (APL) was formed by a group of specialist prison lawyers in 2008 to represent the interests and views of practitioners in prison law. We are not a prisoners' rights group and links to excellent organisations carrying out that work can be found via our links here.

Primarily, its formation was in response to proposals to cut yet further already meagre LSC funding for this complex area of law, even though no increase in the lowest practitioner fee rates in the legal aid scheme has been seen since 1996.

The APL is now organised and fighting the proposals to yet further reduce prison law funding. We are also actively working to increasing the skills of prison law practitioners through enhanced training. Member participation is actively encouraged through our members' area with a wide interaction and exchange of news and information to further the aims of good practice in prison law. The association has engaged in robust discussions with the Parole Board and Ministry of Justice regularly.

The Association is purely and simply a prison law practitioners' group representing the professional interests of those actively engaged in supervised prison law work funded by the LSC as the principal client organisation.