Alexander McLean (activist)

McLean was born in 1985[2] and grew up in the "southern outskirts of London."[4] His father is Jamaican and worked as a retired tool maker while his mother was from Surrey and worked for United Airways.[2] He has an older brother and sister.[2]

McLean attended Kingston Grammar School, having been awarded a scholarship.[2] At a young age, he became fascinated with social issues and the criminal justice system.[2][3] In his teens, he worked for a quadriplegic who suffered from multiple sclerosis and volunteered at a hospice.[2]

After high school, McLean visited Uganda to volunteer as a hospice worker[3] at the Mulago hospital in Kampala.[5] There, he was motivated to start the African Prisons Project in 2007[6] after observing that prison inmates were not given proper medical care[2][7] and seeing the conditions at Luzira Upper Prison.[8] After coming back to the United Kingdom, McLean fund-raised to provide good health facilities and educate inmates in Ugandan prisons about the law, beginning the organization.[6][9]

McLean attended the University of Nottingham, graduating in 2007.[1] He was the first in his family to earn a university degree.[4] After graduation, he moved to Kampala, where he created a team of local and international staff and volunteers with the goal of professionalizing the African Prisons Project and increasing its impact.[1]

McLean studied at the University of London by correspondence, receiving a Master of Laws in 2009 and being called to the bar of England and Wales in 2010.[1]