Injustices and failures in the judicial system not only take place in a developing country like ours, but also in industrialized nations such as the UK, where an increasing number of suicides take place in the so-called “care” of Prison Services.
“I judge a society by its approach towards vulnerable people,” said Pauline Campbell, an active campaigner against deaths in the British prisons. “Therefore, I refuse to call this country Great Britain, it is just Britain for me,” said the retired teacher, protesting outside a prison in central London, where a female inmate died recently.
For the 59-year-old woman activist, there is nothing to lose anymore. She does not fear fighting the system, the police and the government after she lost the most precious thing in her life four years back, her 18-year old daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Campbell. The mourning mother has been hauled off to the police station fourteen times for protesting female deaths in prison and has been charged four times for offences including obstructing the highway
“After I lost Sarah, I felt I do not have anything else to lose, she was everything to me,” said the grieving mother with tears rolling down her cheeks. “I will not stop embarrassing the government. That is my raison d'être, now, to protest the deaths of women in jail.”
Sarah was one among 39 women in prison in the UK, who died in the last four years while being on remand, sentencing or trial.
Although the total number of suicides dropped to 67 in 2006 from 78 a year ago, a welcome drop after three years of record levels of self-inflicted deaths, it is likely to touch higher levels again. A recent study by the Forum for Preventing Deaths in Custody shows that there have been 68 jail suicides so far in 2007.
In comparison, about 1,575 custodial deaths took place in 2005-2006 in India, up from 1,493 in a year ago, according to most recent data provided by the National Human Rights Commission, which was set up in 1993 as a human rights monitoring institution constituted by the Parliament. More than 50,000 custodial deaths has been reported in the last 10 years, but the number of suicides is not revealed or known, which makes it difficult to compare with the suicidal rates in the UK.
Still, the conclusions drawn suggest that the state of India’s justice systems speaks volumes about the human rights abuse in a country known to be the biggest democracy in the world. Alike the UK, prisons in India also suffer from problems including overcrowding, lack of facilities, transparency of activities in the prison and inhuman treatment and torture of detainees. It is common in Indian prisons that the detainees are assaulted as they arrive in the premises, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.
“This is a practice continued after the colonial period and due to wrong perception, allegedly to 'soften' detainees so that they could be easily controlled while in custody,” the Commission said on its website, adding torture is not considered as a crime in the world’s second-most populous country.
Suicide and self harm is one of the biggest challenges the British prison service faces today, according to the Howard League Reform. There are several cases of neglect, like that of Sarah’s, in the UK.
Although on "suicide watch", Sarah somehow managed to ingest an overdose of antidepressant prescription drugs while held on the prison's segregation block within 24 hours of being in the prison. She was convicted for manslaughter. She was carried out of the jail unconscious, and died several hours later in hospital without regaining consciousness. Almost a third of suicides occur within the first week of someone arriving in custody and one in seven is within 48 hours.
Between 2:30 pm and 4:30 pm on 18 January 2003, she took Dothiepin, and then told the prison guards and a nurse what she had done. During the inquest it emerged that the officers and nurse who were in the cell when Sarah told them, walked out, locking her in, then had an argument about whose responsibility it was to call the ambulance. The ambulance was delayed eight minutes at the gate of the prison, while she vomited blood in her cell. When the paramedics got to her, she was unconscious.
The angry mother thinks her daughter was "crying for help" but was instead locked in a cell, alone. A catalogue of errors, including avoidable delays before staff called for an ambulance, led to her death. At the inquest in 2005, the jury agreed that Sarah didn't intend to die, and for that reason a suicide verdict was not returned. The jury's damning narrative verdict included a statement that a "failure in the duty of care" contributed to her death.
Suicide is more common among men. A study in the Lancet, the world's leading independent general medical journal, found the male suicide rate in prison was five times that in the general community.
Nearly three quarters of suicides last year occurred in male local prisons, compared with 60 per cent a year ago “ in spite of improvements in first night and induction procedures in many prisons,” according to the report by Anne Owers, the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. Mental illness, overcrowding, drug and alcohol addiction were the main reasons, according to research experts.
Most prisons are overcrowded and lack the staff or resources to provide intensive support for new inmates, according to the latest annual report from "The pressure of population, the reactive culture in some prisons and the vulnerability of many of those in prison, will continue to make it difficult for prisons properly to protect those in their care,” the most recent report by Owers said.
Paul Cavadino, Chief Executive of Nacro, a crime reduction charity, said in a press release that signs of depression and suicidal intent can be overlooked by prison staff due to overcrowding. “Overcrowding makes it more likely that staff will miss signs of bullying of weaker prisoners which is an important element in some suicides,” he said. “It increases the pressure to move prisoners to jails far from their families, making visits harder. This can increase the isolation and depression of potentially suicidal prisoners.”
Debbie Kirby, Ministry of Justice spokeswoman, agreed and acknowledged that “the prison population contains a high proportion of very vulnerable individuals, many of whom have experienced negative life events that we know increase the likelihood of them harming themselves.” She also said that the issue of suicide in prisons is taken very seriously in the face of population pressures and continued efforts are being made to reduce the numbers.
In 2006, the number of self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales was at the lowest since 1997. There had been a steady increase in suicides since 1994 - up by 53 per cent. Forty-two per cent of such suicides occur during the first month of a prisoner arriving at his/her first prison or being transferred to a different one.
The Home Office was split and the Ministry of Justice was created in May this year. The newly created office will be responsible, in particular, for the courts and tribunals, and for criminal justice, including prisons.
As of September 14, the prison population stood close to a record high with 80,937 people. In June, the population touched its peak at 80,977 inmates. Campbell is concerned that as the number of prisoners soar, more and more deaths will be inevitable.
“So many people are dying at the hands of the state and there is never any accountability,” said Campbell. “No officer or staff of the prison has ever been held accountable, while there is ill treatment of the most vulnerable people of the society held in care and custody of prisons. It is appalling and we have to put an end to this.”
Campbell is not alone. Among grieving parents is also Alan Powell, who lost his 26-year old daughter, Caroline Powell earlier this year. The mother of five died while on remand for burglary. Caroline, who had suffered domestic violence and lost her kids to social services, hanged herself in her cell.
“She was owed a right to life and a legal duty by the prison authorities to keep my daughter safe - a sad failure in both these duties,” said the father of the deceased. “Caroline was not the first and she certainly would not be the last,” said the angry father, who often wonders “what was going through Caroline’s head when she decided to take her life.”
Besides most prisoners being vulnerable, neglect of duty, physical and verbal abuse from officers also lead to deaths of most people, said Eric Allison, prison correspondent at the Guardian and co-author of the book ‘Strangeways: A serious Disturbance’. To end further deaths in these prisons, the prison services “must avoid their running as breeding grounds for more crime,” said Allison, who blames the government for not convicting responsible officers.
There is still “a lot of abuse” that prisoners are subjected to in prisons, he said. The Manchester-based reporter has also served more than 16 years in jail. “If you abuse, offenders become victims and they feel victims at the hands of law. They vent their anger in a negative way and are full of hatred,” said Allison, who recalls, how he wanted to commit a mass murder in Manchester prison as he wanted to take revenge from most officers.
Catherine Hayes, a case worker of campaigning group Inquest, a charity organization which investigates deaths in custodies, can not agree more. “Many of these deaths raise issues of negligence, abuse of human rights and failure to care for the vulnerable,” she said. Despite evidence of unlawful or excessive use of force or neglect, “no prison officer has been held responsible,” added Hayes, who has looked after 100s of cases. Since 1995, Inquest has investigated more than 2,000 deaths.
Lord Ramsbotham, former Chief Inspector of Prisons, is angry with the government and is pushing the government to consider extending the Corporate Manslaughter Bill to include deaths in custody, which has been denied previously.
“The managers should be accountable for these deaths,” he said. The new offence would apply when a person's death is caused by state’s negligence, but ministers wanted to exclude prisons and police.
Ministry of Justice does not agree with the inclusion of the extended Bill. Spokeswoman Kirby said “we are opposing extending the offence to deaths in custody, as it would have wider impact on policy making. Any deaths in custody would necessarily bring into question areas of wider public policy making and would not simply focus on operational issues.”
Still, Ramsbotham does not understand their explanation. “Why it is that grieving families, as victims of government policy, should not be treated in the same way as victims of a private-sector company,” he said, adding that the government also needs same laws and policies for private and public prisons, which is not the case right now, giving a lee way to state prisons.
He also emphasized the need to stabilize prison management and recruit, train and supervise responsible staff. Involving the community in helping offenders, reliable monitoring systems, currently under threat, should be maintaining make prison a safer and a better place than a suicidal spot, he added.
“Human life should not be subject to politics, it is not a mark of civilized country,” he added.
That echoes comments from Campbell, who is disappointed in the government for doing very little.
“It's time the government woke up to the important job and learnt from their lessons in the past,” she said. “Otherwise more and more people will die in the so-called care of prisons.”
“It's time the government woke up to the realisation that prisons must uphold the legal duty of care, she said. “When a prisoner dies in the care of the State, we are told that "lessons will be learned", but 38 women prisoners have died from self-inflicted injuries since my daughter's death in 2003. So, for me, the words are fairly meaningless.
“Prisons are not above the law, and all inmates have a right to life under Article 2. While prisons continue to flout the law, more and more people will die in the so-called care of these institutions.”
As she makes her point, death toll is increasing. Among the most recent ones is the apparently self-inflicted death of 25-year-old Lisa Doe, who died at a prison in a prison in Surrey, south-east of London, on September 11. She was the seventh woman to die this year.
