Deaths at young offender institution in Scotland ‘could have been avoided’
The deaths of two young people in custody could have been avoided, according to the long-awaited report of a joint inquiry into their suicides within months of one another,The 419-page document, which identified “a catalogue of failures” in the system that was charged with their care, prompted their families’ lawyer to call on the UK government to end prisons’ immunity from prosecution,Katie Allan, 20, and William Lindsay, 16, were able to kill themselves at Polmont young offender institution near Falkirk in 2018 despite staff having been alerted to their specific vulnerabilities,At an emotionally charged press conference, their families welcomed the damning report by Sheriff Simon Collins KC and demanded a complete overhaul of Scotland’s fatal accident inquiry (FAI) system to make its recommendations legally binding,John Reilly, William’s brother, described how his “baby brother, a terrified little boy” was left alone in a cell for 10 hours at a time.
William died three days after he was sent to Polmont because there was no space in a children’s secure unit, having walked into a police station with a knife,Reilly said his mother and two sisters had all died since 2018, none of them able to come to terms with his death and the unanswered questions around it,The FAI, which was held last January, had heard how William was removed from observations on the morning before he died, despite his lengthy history of self-harming behaviour, and Collins said “almost all of those who interacted with him were at fault”,Allan’s mother, Linda, said her daughter “was brutalised in Polmont, so much so that she lost all hope and saw only one solution, her death”,The University of Glasgow student killed herself while serving a 16-month sentence for dangerous and drink driving.
The inquiry heard how she was subject to regular, humiliating strip searches and relentless bullying, and the report identified multiple failures by prison and healthcare staff to record and share information relevant to her self-harm risk.Collins found that if Allan’s cell had been made safe – which could have been done at minimal cost – she would not have died.Her mother dismissed as a “farce” the Scottish Prison Service’s undertaking of a ligature audit, which was promised in 2019 but has still not been done across the SPS estate.“The hardest thing for us to accept is that a screwdriver could have saved Katie’s life.A bunk bed being replaced by a single bed could have saved William’s life,” she said.
While FAI determinations cannot apportion blame, the strongly worded report, far longer than average, makes 25 recommendations, including that the SPS take practical steps to make cells safer,The report criticised the service’s failure to do so in the years since the two deaths in 2018,Deborah Coles, the executive director of the charity Inquest, who has been supporting the families, said the “highly unusual and far-reaching” report was the exception and there had been “an institutional culture of secrecy, defensiveness, complacency and neglect both at an individual and corporate level”,She said systemic change should involve a radical change in the investigation of deaths in custody, with more timely inquiries and access to legal aid for grieving families,Coles also called for a national oversight mechanism to monitor and track how recommendations were acted upon, and joined the call for an end to crown immunity across the UK.
The families’ lawyer, Aamer Anwar, said Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service told him before the FAI commenced there was more than sufficient evidence to prosecute the SPS for the deaths under health and safety laws but because of crown immunity nothing could be done.“It is time this archaic law, this licence to kill was changed by the UK government for all prisons throughout the UK,” he said.An SPS spokesperson said it would carefully consider the recommendations.“Our thoughts remain with the families of Katie Allan and William Lindsay and we would like to take this opportunity to offer our sincere condolences and apologies for the failures identified in this report,” they added.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.
org or jo@samaritans.ie.In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor.In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14.
Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Are the young really so down on democracy? | Letters
It’s naturally concerning that a recent poll on which you report (13 January), and which Owen Jones refers to (Young people are abandoning democracy for dictators. I can understand their despair, 14 January), suggests that one in five young Britons would prefer an unelected dictator to democracy. However, comparing this with a 2022 poll gives rise to a more optimistic view: that among young Britons, support for unelected dictators appears to be falling, while support for democracy appears to be modestly increasing.In the 2022 poll, by the thinktank Onward, only 72% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 76% of 25- to 34-year-olds agreed that democracy is a fairly or very good system of government (as against 94% of those aged 65-plus), while an astonishing 60% of 18- to 44-year-olds agreed that “a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections” is a fairly or very good system of government (as against 27% of those aged 65-plus). That poll didn’t ask respondents to choose between democracy and dictatorship, so comparison requires caution, but on any view the generation gap on support for democracy and dictatorship is not new, and the appeal of unelected dictatorship among the young appears to be on the wane
Woman with ‘distorted notion of revenge’ sentenced for stabbing transgender woman
A woman who carried out a transphobic stabbing attack motivated by a “distorted notion of revenge” has been sentenced to more than eight years in youth detention.The victim, a transgender woman who was 18 at the time, was stabbed nine times in Harrow last February in an attack involving five young people wearing masks, the Old Bailey heard.She only survived because passersby stepped in to help, the court was told.After stabbing the victim nine times, Summer Betts-Ramsey, 20, told a friend: “It deserved it.” She admitted possessing a knife and causing grievous bodily harm with intent
Ryan Wellings jailed after partner Kiena Dawes took her own life
A violent and controlling “monster” who subjected his late partner, Kiena Dawes, to repeated assaults, bullying and belittling has been jailed for six and a half years.A jury at Preston crown court found Ryan Wellings, 30, guilty of assault and coercive and controlling behaviour on Monday.His victim for two years was Dawes, 23, who took her own life, blaming Wellings from “beyond the grave” for her death. The same jury found him not guilty of manslaughter.On Thursday, the honorary recorder of Preston, Judge Altham, jailed Wellings, a man described by the prosecution as an “entitled, aggressive bully” and by Dawes’s friends as a “horrible little bastard” with a jealous streak who did not like being answered back to
Incapacity benefit cuts consultation was ‘misleading’ and unlawful, judge rules
Labour’s plan to push through £3bn of cuts to incapacity benefits has received a setback after a judge ruled an official consultation setting out the proposals was misleading and unlawful.The high court said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had presented UK-wide incapacity benefit assessment reforms as a way to support disabled people into work without making clear the “primary rationale” of the proposals was cost savings.The consultation, which was carried out by the previous government in autumn 2023, failed to mention that 424,000 disabled people would see their benefits cut, many losing £416 a month, the judge found.Documents released to the court also revealed that internal DWP estimates suggested the reforms to the “fit for work” test known as the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) would push 100,000 highly vulnerable disabled people into absolute poverty.Ellen Clifford, a disability activist who launched the legal challenge, said the proposed cuts had been “prioritised over lives”
Hospital patients dying undiscovered in corridors, report on NHS reveals
Patients are dying in hospital corridors and going undiscovered for hours, while others who suffer heart attacks cannot be given CPR because of overcrowding in walkways, a bombshell report on the state of the NHS has revealed.So many patients are being cared for in hospital corridors across the UK that in some cases pregnant women are having miscarriages outside wards while other patients are unable to call for help because they have no call bell and are subjected to “animal-like conditions”, said the Royal College of Nursing.The RCN warned that patients were “routinely coming to harm” and in some cases dying because vital equipment was not available and staff were too busy to give everyone adequate care.Dr Adrian Boyle, the leader of Britain’s A&E doctors, said the nurses’ testimonies on which the report was based were so horrendous that it “must be a watershed moment, a line in the sand” and must prompt the government to redouble its efforts to get the NHS working properly again.Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “I am shocked, appalled and so saddened that this is the level of care we as clinicians are being forced to provide to our patients – people who turn to the NHS and its staff when they are most vulnerable and in need
‘Absolute pandemonium’: stories of ‘corridor care’ from the NHS in England
John, 42, said he was “quite angry” after spending about 24 hours in a hospital corridor in south-west England, having arrived in A&E on Monday afternoon with chest pain. “It was very clear that the hospital was running beyond capacity.”At the time of writing, he had moved to a different hospital in the area and was waiting for an angiogram on Wednesday. Messaging from his corridor hospital bed he said: “It’s narrow, cramped and there is zero patient privacy.”John is one of dozens of people who shared their experiences of the corridors of A&E with the Guardian, after a hospital in north London posted adverts calling for nurses to take on 12-hour “corridor care” shifts
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