An English prison reformer in Kamiti!

Meet Alexander Mc Clean, Founder and Director of African Prisons Project, a Uganda-based organization working to improve the lives of men, women, and children living in African prisons through healthcare, education, access to justice and community reintegration. McLean’s fascination with issues of inequality began at a young age. At 9, he was reading about the Civil Rights movement and the death penalty, fascinated by the power of the law to inflict punishment as well as deal out justice.

He graduated in July 2007 from the University of Nottingham. At 18, he traveled to Uganda to volunteer as a hospice worker, where he saw that while patients with private resources received care, inmates sent from prisons were left neglected and untreated. Since then he has been based in Uganda and Kenya, establishing a team of local and international staff and volunteers to professionalize the organization and to enable it to increase in effectiveness and broaden its outreach. Now APP has worked with more than 20, 000 prisoners in Uganda, Kenya and Sierra Leone and has been invited to begin work in a variety of other countries. Alexander received his Master of Laws from the University of London in March 2009 after studying by correspondence. He was called to the bar of England and Wales as a barrister in 2010. He is currently writing a PhD on issues relating to the death penalty

Alexander has received several awards for his work. They include UK Charity Volunteer of the Year 2006, UK Young Philanthropist of the Year 2007, Overall Winner, Beacon Prize for Philanthropy 2007, University of Nottingham Alumni of the Year 2007, UK Graduate of the Year 2007 and winner of the Vodafone World of Difference Prize 2008. The African Prisons Project was a runner up in the New Charity of the Year category at the Charity Times Awards 2008.

Mc Clean is also a Hardwicke and Lord Mansfield Scholar of Lincoln’s Inn. He is the youngest Fellow of the Beacon Trust and a Magistrate on the Nottingham bench. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in October 2008. He was the first member of the University of Nottingham to be appointed an Alumni Laureate. He is an Ashoka Fellow.

His hope to do something about the disparity has over the years evolved into The African Prisons Project, helping prisoners in Uganda and Kenya access a legal education, and working to develop leaders among prisoners and prison staff.

The link to his blog https://mcleanapp.wordpress.com