After suicides, Scotland told to stop sending low-risk offenders to jail
The 21-year-old had served just three months of a 16-month sentence for drink-driving when she was found dead in her cell in Polmont Prison last June.
She had had no previous contact with the police and showed immediate remorse. The boy's parents asked the sheriff to spare her jail. The criminal justice social work report also recommended that she not be sent to prison.Other families who have suffered similar tragedies say that her suicide exposes decades of political failure and broken promises from successive Scottish governments.Jim Bollan's daughter Angela was just 19 when she hanged herself in Cornton Vale prison.
As long ago as 1998, the then home affairs minister Henry McLeish promised to halve the number of women in jail. Instead, it has doubled.The Howard League says only 3% of the female prison population represents a high risk of danger to other people, while most are mainly a danger to themselves. They say that 40% of prisoner deaths were suicides, while 32 of the 82 people who took their own life in that period were under the age of 30.Linda Allan, who is an honorary lecturer in mental health and well-being at Glasgow University and has worked for the Scottish government as a professional adviser, is calling for an immediate review of ligature points in the prison estate.
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