Our media does from time to time mention prisons where torture and inhumane brutality is prevalent, but it is usually in those far way places run by nasty foreigners, it would never happen here in free democratic UK, ha-ha-ha. So it is with a little surprise that I actually read of treatment tantamount to torture happening in Scottish prisons, though we already know it is happening across the country, it is encouraging to see it get the oxygen of publicity from our mainstream media.
The following extract is from The Daily Record:
An anti-torture watchdog has revealed fears about the use of segregation and excessive force in Scottish jails.
A new report included allegations from a women with borderline personality disorder, who was left with a black eye after one incident and a suspected broken elbow in another.
The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT)’s report was based on visits to Shotts and Cornton Vale prisons.
It highlighted 27 cases where force was used on women – aimed at keeping them safe – following incidents of self-harm or suicide attempts.
It also describes the segregation of some women in HMP Cornton Vale as “akin to solitary confinement” and “verging on institutional neglect”, according to The Ferret website.
The report said: “As neither woman wanted to exercise alone in the stark yards, the women were locked alone in their cells for 23.5 to 24 hours each day.
“The women also ate alone in their cells, where their food was given to them through the door. The only regular inter-prisoner communication…was to shout through the walls to each other.”
Considering that Cornton Vale Prison has the design capacity to hold a maximum of 119 inmates and the details from the following extract, that in itself is an indictment against the place and those responsible for its management.
It has been criticised for overcrowding, with 340 inmates being held there in August 2004.[6] A high number of suicides have taken place there. Eleven women killed themselves while serving sentences at Cornton Vale between 1995 and 2002.[5] In 2010, Brigadier Hugh Munro (the Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland) declared the prison in a "state of crisis", citing overcrowding, two-hour waits for the toilet, cold meals, lack of activities and a deep problem of prisoner boredom which was impeding rehabilitation.[7]
In 2006, 98% of the inmates had addiction issues; 80% had problems with mental health and 75% were survivors of abuse. It also holds children, in particular the babies of inmates who are imprisoned alongside their mothers and teenagers where there is no suitable accommodation available in young offenders institutions.
In 2006 it was announced that the practice of "double cuffing" all inmates who are in labour to a custody officer until second stage labour and immediately re-handcuffed after giving birth, had ended.[8]
A 2012 review into women's prisons in Scotland, conducted by former Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini described Cornton Vale as "a miserable place" and that conditions for prisoners were "antediluvian and appalling".[9][10]
In 2019 women were found “who clearly were in need of urgent care and treatment in a psychiatric facility, and [who] should not have been in a prison environment”. Among them was one woman who bit through the skin and muscle of her arm down to the bone and another who set her hair on fire.[11]
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