Scotland’s prisons are repeatedly breaching the human rights of inmates put in solitary confinement, particularly those with severe mental health problems, the prisons inspectorate has said.
Prisons are routinely failing to provide segregated inmates with at least two hours of human contact a day, are using segregation to “contain” inmates with severe mental health issues who need specialist care, and are failing to properly reintegrate troubled prisoners, it found.
In an unusually critical report, Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, the chief prisons inspector for Scotland, said the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) and NHS Scotland had to make urgent improvements in their handling of prisoners in solitary confinement.
“The combination of poor environment and limited stimuli in segregation units risk a stark deterioration in prisoners’ mental health,” her report said. “Many of the prisoners we interviewed had self‐harmed, some had previously attempted suicide, and a few had witnessed fellow prisoners taking their own lives.”
She said the poor conditions in nearly all Scotland’s prisons were a clear breach of the UK’s legal obligations under human rights treaties, including the United Nations’ Mandela rules. Those require a minimum of two hours of meaningful human interaction for all prisoners in solitary confinement.
“We found evidence of overuse and long detrimental segregation periods, and we found a lack of meaningful human contact, mental health support, meaningful activity and reintegration planning for segregated prisoners,” the report said.
“It was also clear that [segregation units] are too often used inappropriately as a place of safety for those who are extremely mentally unwell, whether awaiting placement in the forensic secure estate or suffering from severe personality or behavioural disorders which do not meet the threshold for inpatient treatment.”
HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland launched its investigation after the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture raised significant concerns about the use of segregation in Scotland after two visits in 2018 and 2019.
The inspectorate found that a large majority of the inmates were put into segregation units for a matter of hours or days. A significant number, however, were segregated long-term.
SPS said it recorded 1,242 “stays” in segregation units in 2021-22 but could not break that down into a specific number of inmates. The inspectorate discovered that 138 prisoners were in solitary for three months or more during that year, another breach of the Mandela rules. The record was 1,017 days for one prisoner; eight had been in segregation for more than a year.
An SPS spokesperson said it was already addressing these concerns. They said: “We recognise there are areas for improvement in the fabric and facilities in some of our ageing establishments, and in supporting those individuals with mental illness. We are currently conducting an internal review of the use of [segregation units] and the findings within the HMIPS report will be used as part of this review.
“It remains a priority for the SPS to establish a trauma-informed environment for all those who live and work in our establishments. We will respond to all the recommendations in the report in due course.”
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
