A police station representative who answered more than a dozen calls from a prisoner’s unauthorised mobile phone has been barred from the profession.
Suzanne Hughes, an employee of Birmingham firm Harringtons Legal LLP, had attended a client’s police station in June 2019 after his arrest. The client, who had requested that the firm represent him, was then remanded in prison until October 2019.
During his time inside, Hughes sent two text messages to the client’s mobile phone and received and answered 18 calls made from the same device. He had not been authorised to have any mobile phone in his possession.
Hughes, who had been with her firm for almost 13 years, was arrested for communicating with a serving prisoner in November 2019 and dismissed the same month.
In May last year at Birmingham Crown Court, she pleaded guilty to intentionally encouraging or assisting a prisoner communicating using an unauthorised mobile phone. She received a six-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, and was ordered to carry out 150 hours’ community service. The police told the Solicitors Regulation Authority about the conviction.
Hughes, a non-solicitor, agreed a section 43 order with the SRA preventing her from working for any regulated firm. The regulator said that by communicating with her client in these ways, she encouraged and assisted him to commit further offences, contrary to his best interests.
The SRA added: ‘As a police station accredited representative, she ought to have known that for her to do either of these things was against the law. Her behaviour questions the high standards of professional judgement which someone delivering legal services should demonstrate.’
Hughes agreed to pay £300 costs.
