Over a number of years, the Scottish Prison Service has experienced suicide in custody, so we have developed our policy and practice in a multidisciplinary way with experts in their fields to support us, including the Samaritans, national health service colleagues and others.
We review every death in custody. We ensure that any lessons learned are used to inform policy and practice, where applicable.
We ensure that our staff are trained. We have what we call our talk to me policy. Everybody who works in prison, regardless of whether they are a prison officer, receives training and is familiarised with the issues, so that if they come across anyone who is distraught, or who has parasuicidal thoughts or behaviours, they can use our policy to inform how they respond, and we would enact the policy in order to support the individual during that crisis.
The other aspect is that, over a number of years, we have developed our processes on admission and first nights in custody to take account of such issues. Anyone who comes into custody—whether it be for the first time or not—will be treated the same. They will go through an admission process that will look at their immediate needs, and also an immediate nurse assessment that will take account of their presenting behaviours and issues at the time of admission. They will also then go through the first night in custody process. Therefore, during those first 24 hours, information and support are made available to individuals.
Over a number of years, we have tried to learn from our experience in Scotland, set against what we might describe as the increasing complexity of the cases that we receive into custody. I think that we would describe the case of the unfortunate young woman you referred to was complex, but the point applies to both men and women. Those who come into custody are presenting with more complex issues, such as the experience of women and young people who have experienced trauma. Therefore, in relation to women and young people especially, we are developing an approach that is much more informed about trauma. We are also supporting our staff and others who work with us—but also learning from them—to improve our practice and to ensure that we take account of those very complex factors during individuals’ periods in custody. That is so that we can support them as best we can—in relation to not just their criminogenic need but their personal needs as well.