Frankland and CSC
The acquittal the prison record cannot erase
Kevan is innocent. Frankland matters because he was cleared by a jury in 2011, after a trial in which his case was lawful self-defence, yet the prison system had already moved him toward the Close Supervision Centre system before the jury heard the evidence.
After Frankland, prison authorities moved Kevan toward extreme control even though the criminal court later cleared him. The prison allegation was used to tighten control around him. The trial exposed a different picture of Frankland: Kevan had described suffering racism, violence, sexual violence, fear and PTSD. A jury acquitted him. The CSC years continued.
Five key dates
Frankland, trial, acquittal, CSC
Before the incident
Frankland was already being described as dangerous for Kevan
After the trial, The Justice Gap reported that the case centred on whether Kevan was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by a longstanding regime of racism, physical violence and sexual violence inflicted on him at HMP Frankland. The reporting also described abuse of other mainly non-white prisoners. FRFI reported that prisoner witnesses gave evidence about the system Kevan had been subjected to for 17 months. The Guardian commentary argued that the prison itself had been put under public scrutiny.
Kevan described being pushed and shoved in segregation after returning food, then shouting so other prisoners could hear what was happening in case witnesses were needed. He also described racist abuse directed at a Black prisoner nearby. This was not an abstract prison-condition complaint. It was Kevan trying to survive inside a prison culture he said was violent, racist and dangerous.
The jury had to confront far more than one vague allegation. The defence picture included the racism, physical violence, sexual violence, intimidation, fear and PTSD Kevan said he had suffered, alongside prisoner witnesses, questions about injury photographs and questions about missing or unavailable evidence. The abuse evidence was part of why Kevan’s lawful self-defence case had to be heard in the real setting of Frankland.
The Justice Gap reported that consultant psychologist Roy Shuttleworth, first instructed by the prosecution, gave evidence for the defence after his report supported the PTSD picture. Prisoner witnesses and public reporting also placed racism and violence inflicted on Kevan before the jury. The acquittal was not a separate court finding on every part of the prison regime, but it was a jury rejection of the prosecution case after hearing Kevan’s self-defence case in that wider setting.
The defence context
The abuse evidence made the self-defence case impossible to dismiss
Kevan said he was subjected to racist abuse, violence, sexual violence, intimidation and psychological harm. The wider reporting also described abuse of other mainly non-white prisoners. The jury then heard his case that he acted because he believed officers were about to attack him.
Visual record
The photographs challenged the cut-lip account
Prison staff claimed under oath that they saw only a cut lip. The photographs of Kevan’s injured face sit against that claim, alongside questions about wiped CCTV and a missing digital camera.
The photographs are stark. They place Kevan’s injured face beside the minimised cut-lip account and show why the prison version could not be accepted at face value.
Open the full injury photograph
The sequence
The CSC process began before the jury cleared Kevan
The incident took place at HMP Frankland. Later court records describe the prison allegation about serious injuries to three staff members. Kevan’s trial case was lawful self-defence, and a jury acquitted him.
The 2025 High Court judgment records that Kevan was moved to HMP Woodhill for CSC assessment within weeks of the incident.
The same judgment records that he was selected for movement into the CSC system. That selection happened before the criminal trial over Frankland.
FRFI and The Justice Gap reported that the jury returned not guilty verdicts after deliberation. The later Court of Appeal judgment records that Kevan was acquitted.
The 2026 Court of Appeal judgment records that Kevan remained within the CSC establishment and was moved between prisons eleven times between 2011 and 2019.
The acquittal
A jury heard the case and cleared him
The acquittal matters because it breaks the hostile shorthand that has followed Kevan for years. The criminal court did not convict him over Frankland. The jury heard the prosecution case, heard the defence case of lawful self-defence, and acquitted him.
For Kevan, that verdict carries moral weight. He was already carrying the burden of a wrongful conviction. He then faced another grave prosecution from inside prison, with the prison account carrying enormous force against him. The jury’s decision cut through that account.
The acquittal did not end the CSC. The prison system had already placed Kevan on a path of extreme control, and later court records show that the years after the acquittal remained dominated by CSC placement, designated cells, repeated transfers and reviews of risk.
The bridge to CSC
Frankland became the doorway into years of extreme control
The Close Supervision Centre system is described by HM Inspectorate of Prisons as the deepest form of custody in the prison system. It is a small, high-control estate for prisoners the prison service says require close management.
In Kevan’s case, court records show the CSC process began almost immediately after Frankland. The 2025 High Court judgment records the transfer to Woodhill for CSC assessment on 26 March 2010 and selection into the CSC system in April 2010. The later acquittal did not remove the Frankland incident from the prison narrative used around him.
Frankland and CSC have to be read together because Kevan was cleared in the criminal court, but the prison consequences continued. The effect was years of control, isolation, transfer and pressure while he was still fighting to prove his innocence in the original case.
Why it matters
The acquittal belongs beside the years that followed
The order of events is brutal. Kevan was moved into CSC assessment within weeks of Frankland. He was selected for CSC before the criminal trial over Frankland. A jury later heard his lawful self-defence case, including the prison-regime context, and acquitted him.
Kevan’s writing and the original Justice for Kevan photographs make the abuse impossible to reduce to a line in a chronology. FRFI, The Justice Gap and The Guardian add the trial account: racism, physical violence, evidence about sexual violence, PTSD, prisoner witnesses and the public challenge to Frankland’s regime.
Kevan is innocent. The original conviction is wrongful, and the prison record after Frankland shows how much harder the system has made his fight for justice.
Records behind this page
2026 Court of Appeal judgment
2025 High Court judgment
2010 Court of Appeal criminal judgment
FRFI report on the not guilty verdict
The Justice Gap: Frankland on trial
The Guardian: Frankland prison has been found guilty
HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on close supervision centres
Justice for Kevan archive: Frankland brutality
Justice for Kevan archive: Kev and the brutality of HMP Frankland staff
Justice for Kevan archive: violence in segregation units
2025 High Court judgment
2010 Court of Appeal criminal judgment
FRFI report on the not guilty verdict
The Justice Gap: Frankland on trial
The Guardian: Frankland prison has been found guilty
HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on close supervision centres
Justice for Kevan archive: Frankland brutality
Justice for Kevan archive: Kev and the brutality of HMP Frankland staff
Justice for Kevan archive: violence in segregation units