Deaths in Scottish prisons at record high.

I wouldn't hold my breath for any improvement. Sturgeon and the SNP know there are no votes in prisons policy and they are completely obsessed with the independence delusion.

Difficult to find the numbers but this does indicate the vast majority of the deaths are of male prisoners although the article gives the impression that is not the case.

"Gender
The overwhelming majority of deaths in custody in 2021 (98%) occurred in the male estate, a finding that has been consistent over time.

There were 6 deaths in the female estate, down from 7 in 2020, accounting for around 2% of the total deaths. As a result, cross-tabulations of characteristics with gender (e.g. ethnicity by gender) are not presented below because the numbers of deaths in the female estate are too small for meaningful analysis.

There were 86 self-inflicted deaths in 2021, all of which occurred in the male estate."

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/safety-in-custody-quarterly-update-to-september-2021/safety-in-custody-statistics-england-and-wales-deaths-in-prison-custody-to-december-2021-assaults-and-self-harm-to-september-2021

Whoever and for whatever reason it's very sad.

Grantanow

I wouldn't hold my breath for any improvement. Sturgeon and the SNP know there are no votes in prisons policy and they are completely obsessed with the independence delusion.

At a Women for Indy event I attended, one of the key speakers was a woman who had been in prison. She talked about how bad it was.

It would be really nice if we didn't try to make political points out of tragic circumstances.

Jackiest Those statistics refer to England and Wales, not Scotland.
The report says that someone imprisoned in 2022 in a Scottish prison would be twice as likely to die as someone in 2008.

Very sad for whatever the reasons.

volver While I agree that it would be really nice if political points weren’t scored from this ongoing situation, the Scottish prison service is a devolved power.

Long before "Sturgeon" a local girl died in the womans prison in Stirling .She was a drug addict .Her family fought to have Drugs offences not a jailable sentence but it seems they still are.
The Scottish government who you all like to blame for all things has had plans to change how drugs are tackled for over a decade.Westminster wont "allow" those changes ,drugs are not a devolved issue we are told.
The plans on tackling the drug problem include a Portuguese
style decriminalisation and drug rooms where addicts can shoot up safely ,all police officers and I think firefighters now carry a drug to administer to overdoses to cut the deaths .
While addicts are still jailed however there will still be illegal drugs taken into jails...I imagine England and Wales has the same issue But until drugs are treated as a health issue there wont be a solution .
Speak to WM ,this clearly shows that they are holding us back from making progress in the so called war against drugs

grannydarkhair

volver While I agree that it would be really nice if political points weren’t scored from this ongoing situation, the Scottish prison service is a devolved power.

Yes it is. It needs fixing.

And it is wicked to say that the government is ignoring it because they are obsessed with something else.

This might be more about standards at specific prisons proving intractable? There were major problems at a privately run male prison in Wales a few years ago, which took several years to resolve, and in the meantime impacted on the overall figures considerably, when in fact the other prisons did not have similar issues. I can’t see anything about where the suicides occurred in the report

paddyann even Sturgeon admitted that 'she'd taken her eye off the ball' re the huge drug problems up here. Closing many of the rehab places was squarely down to her.
Drug abuse is endemic in prisons. A nasty business all round.

paddyann54 The treatment and prevention of drugs is devolved, however the control of drugs is not devolved. So Westminster cannot imo be wholly blamed for the tragedies that are happening in Scottish prisons.
In December, 2020 Joe Fitzpatrick lost his position as Public Health Minister over the issue of Scotland’s drug problems. Has anything improved since Maree Todd was appointed? It doesn’t appear so from this report.

Perhaps progress needs to be made in preventing drugs getting into prisons.
The American system of a glass barrier between prisoners and visitors plus extremely severe penalties for anyone delivering drugs inside might mean that inmates would leave prison drug free giving them a better start when they return to the outside world.

But why are these deaths higher than in prisons in the rest of the UK?

Drug use is more common up here? Certainly drug deaths are very high.

Sounds like it Aveline but I guess the next question is why drug use is more common up there?

Whatever the truth behind the statistics, these figures are tragic. I think that a lot of the problem is that drugs are not a popular topic; those involved in the rehab world are fighting a hard battle to get limited funds, up against more 'worthwhile' causes. Most people have an opinion on drug abuse and on drug users, but the majority do not, luckily, have experience of the devastation caused to a family when a member gets sucked in to this twilight world. If asked, many people will blame addicts, say they should just give up taking the drugs, call for longer sentences etc., and somehow don't see the addicts as victims, as people suffering from an illness. Rattle a tin in a shopping centre to raise funds for a new children's hospital and people will donate with a smile; rattle a tin to raise funds for a rehab centre and many will walk by.

As to why Scotland has such a problem, I don't know, I don't think that blaming the SNP or Westminster is helpful though. This is a country wide problem, Scotland is an area with a higher concentration today; next time it could be Doncaster or Bridgend.

A few years back, my daughter went to Perth Prison to visit a friend of hers who was being held on remand (not for anything related to drugs).
Her friend told her that he’d been offered various drugs every day since he’d been inside. He was terrified, it had been made very plain that he really couldn’t keep refusing or something “very nasty” might just happen to him or someone he loved. He saw how distraught my daughter was at hearing this and told her not to visit again, he’d told his Mum and sister the same thing for the same reason.
Fortunately for him at least, when his case was heard, he was found not guilty and was released. But the months he spent inside were the worst of his life. He was constantly terrified that he’d hear that his relatives had been harmed in some way.
When my daughter asked him after his release if he’d taken drugs while inside, all he said was “what do you think?” and went on to say that he could understand why prisoners took drugs and in some cases committed suicide, life was so difficult inside.
I honestly can’t even begin to imagine what life inside must be like, I know we watch tv programmes, both real life and fictional but do any of them really portray the horror?
I don’t have an answer to solve Scotland’s drug problems either in or out of prison, but surely the closure of re-hab places was not a sensible move.
I live in a council house in a big scheme in Dundee, and I can’t begin to count the times I’ve seen some poor soul “out of his box” wandering about. I’ve heard discussions about drugs when waiting at my local bus stop and the same when on the bus.
Although I’m not at all religious, every time I see someone plainly under the influence, I always say “Thank God my children never got involved”. It must be awful as a parent to see your child in such a state.
Sorry for the length of the post, but it maybe helps to explain why I feel this report is such a sad indictment of both the Scottish Govt drugs/prison policy and the UK”s in general.

Sounds awful grannydarkhair. Before I retired I visited various prisons in Scotland and went through very scrupulous searching etc. Handbag and phone had to be put in a locker before going in etc. It was hard to see how drugs got in but since then I've heard of letters soaked in drugs and of course drone deliveries. Where there's a will there's a way!

HousePlantQueen In the case of Dundee, we are a post-industrial city with many areas of deprivation and poverty. Dundee has been known as “the drugs capital of Scotland” for several years. The number of deaths fell over the last 18 months or so but is still shockingly high, on average one a week.
My daughter used to work in a Dundee primary school. Over her 13 years working there, every year there was at least one case of a child/children losing a parent to drugs. In two cases, a couple of years apart, it was their second parent they’d lost. Both times, the children went to stay with their g’parents.

That's such a sad tale grannydarkhair.

I got my university education in Dundee and worked there for 25 years, up until I retired.

volver Dundee is a city of the haves and the have nots. Historically, it always has been e.g. the jute barons and the workers employed by them, but I think the differences appear to be more apparent than ever.
I love what’s happening down at the waterfront, and elsewhere, e.g. the V&A and a branch of the Eden project coming to the city. Tourism is on the increase, e.g. quite a few cruise liners have called at Dundee.
I see the waterfront as a long term project that will eventually bring immense benefits to the city and realise/accept that the majority of the money for these improvements was ring-fenced and could not be spent elsewhere.
But only a few hundred yards from the waterfront, the actual town centre, looks neglected. Sadly, like a great many other towns and cities, there are lots of empty shops plus we have a traffic system that imo doesn’t encourage passing trade in any way in the centre.
Re. the drugs deaths: I’d obviously always been aware of the problems in Dundee, but it was the deaths of the school children’s parents my daughter told me about that really brought it home to me. My daughter shed many a tear during her years working in that school, and deprivation and poverty was always the root cause.
The school started a breakfast club because they were aware a great many wee ones weren’t eating before school. There was always “extra” food cooked at lunchtime so that any who wanted could get seconds. However, that sadly stopped when meals started being brought in, rather than cooked on the premises. There was lots of fund raising activities, but tbh, it was a hard core of parents/other family who could/would contribute and with the cost of living crisis today, I doubt if any fund raising will be as successful as it was previously.

Just realised, this has turned into a personal grannydarkhair thread - sorry.

The death rate in English and Welsh prisons is increasing as well, so perhaps it is just a case of us catching up with Scotland. It is a tragedy. The issues in prisons are so complex and drug use is just a part of that. I have no idea if it is the fault of the Scottish government or what part the Westminster government have played, but crowing over the figures or scoring political points on this doesn't seem acceptable to me.