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12.7 am
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) for the opportunity to place on record the policy of the Scottish Prison Service regarding suicide prevention.
No one can be anything but extremely concerned about suicides in prison. The loss of lives, especially young lives, in any circumstances is a matter of the greatest regret to us all, and I wish to take this opportunity to offer my condolences to the families of those who have taken their lives while in custody at Cornton Vale, at Greenock, and at those other prisons where there have been such deaths in recent months.
The hon. Gentleman referred to his constituent, Angela Bollan, who died in custody in Cornton Vale on 26 April 1996. I offer my deepest sympathy to Miss Bollan's family. A fatal accident inquiry will be held into the circumstances surrounding her death, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that any recommendations made by the sheriff will be considered very seriously by the Scottish Prison Service and by Ministers.
There will always be a fatal accident inquiry after any death in custody, unless there is a murder case. I am aware that, only today, a fatal accident inquiry has begun into the death of another young woman at Cornton Vale prison.
There are no easy answers to suicides in prisons--however, that is not to say that there is little that can be done about suicides. The staff of the Scottish Prison Service do a difficult job on behalf of society and they deserve the support of all law-abiding citizens. They take seriously their duty of care to those committed to custody, they identify those at risk of self-harm, and they do whatever they can to minimise that risk. There is much that can be done, and there is much that is being done.
There is no quick-fix solution to suicide, whether in prison or in the community. As the hon. Member will be aware, suicides in the community have also been rising. An increase in prison suicides is all the more likely when significant numbers of those committed to prison have a history of drug misuse, the withdrawal from which brings with it a range of problems with which prison medical staff and ordinary prison officers have to deal.
The Scottish Prison Service's suicide prevention strategy has three main strands: screening to encourage the identification of prisoners at risk, the provision of appropriate care, and good communications by all those involved. It recognises the problems prisoners bring with them into prison or develop while in prison, and it aims to engage medical staff, prison nurses and all other people working in prisons to identify prisoners at risk and to provide appropriate care.
Guidance is available to all prisons on how to deal with prisoners at risk, which takes account of good practice in other institutional settings and which also recognises the reality of the prison situation. However, it is important to remember that prisons are places of secure custody for those who have broken the law and who are deemed by the courts to be in need of such custody for the protection of the public, either because of the nature of their offences or because of the frequency of their offending. Being in prison is certainly no joy ride.
The public have a right to protection from those who, through their anti-social behaviour, consistently infringe the liberty of law-abiding people. There are very few offenders who find themselves in prison as a result of only one brush with the law or one court appearance. For the majority--this applies to women as well as to men--a whole variety of alternatives to custody will have been experienced before a custodial sentence is imposed.
The hon. Gentleman hinted--if I understood him correctly--that there is a place for bail hostels. The Government recognise that supervised and supported accommodation can make a contribution. I appreciate that, for some young people, being remanded in a prison or young offenders institution will be a troubling and difficult experience. However, the court has to achieve a proper balance between the risk that the alleged offender may pose to the community and the risk to the young person. Sometimes, remand in custody is the only option.
Breaches of bail are a serious problem. The public find it difficult to understand why an habitual offender can appear in court one day, only to be released on bail to commit further offences, to cause further distress to victims and to use up police resources. I accept that supervision in the community also has an important role to play in tackling reoffending while on bail.
Three years ago, we widened the scope of those services receiving 100 per cent. central Government funding to incorporate two pilot bail supervision projects in Lothian and Strathclyde. The projects will be evaluated to assess the impact of bail supervision on the behaviour of those who are subject to it.
It is our policy to promote the development, within 100 per cent. funding of criminal justice social work services, of a sufficient network of supervised criminal justice accommodation to enable courts or the Parole Board to impose conditions of residence where they think it necessary in the public interest. Offenders could be on bail, on probation or on supervision after release from custody. Development of the network will be phased over a number of years. An offer in principle has been made to the relevant local authority--Dundee council--for the establishment of a new bail hostel in Tayside.
Whatever the alternatives to prison, however, there will continue to be a need for certain people to be remanded in or committed to prison in the interest of protecting the public, and we need to be realistic about what prisons are. As a sheriff recently observed, prisons are not hospitals; nor are they schools. Identification of those who are at risk is not easy for the professional psychiatrist, far less the ordinary gallery officer. Without that identification, the provision of appropriate care--even within the limitations of the prison environment--is doubly difficult.
Having said that, I do not wish to underestimate the commitment of the Scottish Prison Service to developing and managing a strategy for the care of prisoners at risk that is effective and humane. I am, of course, aware of the criticisms that have been made of the workings of that strategy, but I wish to put on record that the findings of fatal accident inquiries into the deaths of two young women at Cornton Vale, and other recent deaths, have attributed no blame to the staff or management of the Scottish Prison Service.
Like any policy for dealing with human behaviour, the suicide prevention strategy of the Scottish Prison Service will adapt to changing circumstances. The recommendations of Professor Gunn and Dr. Kevin Power are being carefully considered, and a number of their recommendations can readily be taken on board. Others will require more careful thought.
A recurring theme from those who have studied the difficult issue of suicides in prison--from Dr. Chiswick, who investigated suicides at Glenochil in the 1980s, to Professor Gunn and Dr. Power--is the criticism, including criticism by some staff of the Scottish Prison Service, of the use of isolation and seclusion as a response to the apparently suicidal. By "isolation and seclusion", I mean the practice--which is found in virtually all prison systems--of isolating the apparently suicidal in a cell in which the means of self-harm are not available.
I readily accept that that practice, if applied day and night, is unlikely to address the underlying mental and psychological disturbances that may precipitate the suicidal tendency in the prisoner; but it is nevertheless a fact that those who are so isolated do not in general succeed in taking their own lives. In general, it is not prisoners who are under suicide supervision who do so.
Professor Gunn and others have recommended over the years that isolation and seclusion in so-called stripped cells should not be used, at least during the day. They recommend a more therapeutic approach, with, in
appropriate cases, 24-hour surveillance of those who present as potentially suicidal. Professor Gunn has suggested that every Scottish Prison Service custodial establishment--that is, some 19 separate institutions--should have an observational ward for the potentially suicidal, staffed for 24 hours a day.
I do not dispute the value of 24-hour surveillance, but careful consideration must be given not only to the resource implications but to the practicality, in a prison setting where the prospect of a period in a hospital environment runs the risk of being an irresistible temptation to those who pose no suicide risk but who, by presenting as suicidal, would seek to manipulate the authorities into removing them from normal circulation for their own ends.
That is one of the dilemmas facing prison staff--the identification of the genuinely suicidal, and distinguishing them from those who would and do use the threat of suicide to achieve an advantage of some kind. I do, however, agree that proper emphasis should be placed on care for the genuinely suicidal, and I know that the Scottish Prison Service will be considering the recommendations that have been made in that regard very carefully.
The Prisons Board will be considering Professor Gunn's recommendations later this week. Both Professor Gunn and Dr. Power have emphasised the need for more staff training. I assure hon. Members that particular attention will be paid to what further steps can be taken to improve staff's understanding of the suicide prevention strategy, and to professional training.
A number of steps have been taken to improve the professionalism of staff. Forty per cent. of nurses working in the Prison Service now have registered mental qualifications, compared with fewer than 10 per cent. three years ago. In recent weeks, the service has embarked on a major campaign to increase the volume and quality of psychological services through a major recruitment campaign, and a rolling programme of training with at-risk prisoners is under way for prison nursing staff.
At Cornton Vale, specific measures have been taken. Staffing levels within the remand unit have been raised to improve supervision and interaction. Prisoners within the unit are out of cell to the maximum extent possible during the daytime, and work is in hand to improve the activities available to them. It should be remembered, of course, that remand prisoners are not required, under the present rules, to work. The provision of purposeful activity for such prisoners is a major challenge for prison management.
I do not believe that the recent cluster of suicides at Cornton Vale is attributable to shortcomings on the part of prison staff or to fundamental failures in the Scottish Prison Service's suicide prevention strategy. Neither Professor Gunn nor Dr. Power concluded that the strategy is not working. I must make it clear to the hon. Gentleman that any recommendations made by fatal accident inquiries will be taken extremely seriously, as will any of their observations.
I stress that everyone has a part to play in the prevention of suicide, including prisoners. The listener scheme at Edinburgh prison, in which designated volunteer prisoners provide confidential support to those who come to them for help, has been widely praised, and has been commended by Professor Gunn. It is being extended to other prisons, with the assistance of the Samaritans. Families and friends also have a role, and I urge any who have reason to be concerned about the possibility of self-harm by a prisoner to contact the governor of the prison concerned.
The staff of the Scottish Prison Service have the most important part to play--by staff, I mean all staff. Suicide prevention is not the preserve of doctors, nurses or other professionals. All staff must be alert to risk, and discipline staff in the galleries are perhaps better placed than most to pick up the signals.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting this distressing matter. Where further training is required, it will be provided. Where communications need to be improved, they will be. There is no lack of commitment to the task by the management and staff of the Prison Service, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will join me in wishing them well in the difficult job they do.
The hon. Gentleman made an important point: that less serious offences do not necessarily merit imprisonment. I agree. He has said before that fine defaulters should not necessarily be imprisoned, and that there should be better ways of dealing with them. We should explore those matters, but the public need to be protected from dangerous criminals--we are not in dispute over that. These matters need to be studied carefully in the light of the findings and recommendations of the fatal accident inquiries.
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