Chamber and committees

Petitioner submission of 21 October 2021

PE1900/B - Access to prescribed medication for detainees in police custody

Firstly, the healthcare of detainees has to be firmly enforced by law, because I find it worrying in the extreme that in my opinion over the last 7 years over 70,000 detainees have had their human rights abused by NHS Grampian with apparently the consent of Police Scotland.

An inquiry has to look into the death in custody of detainees who in my opinion were medically triaged by unqualified police staff without even seeing a clinician this despite Police Scotland own Standard Operating Procedures(Welfare and Care of Persons in Police Custody.) states how detainees with a drug marker should be treated. ( Risk Assessment and Management 9-9:19:2.). 

This segment of Welfare and Care of Persons in Police Custody must and should be enforced by law. Page 54: Medical Examination explains what should happen, including rules on prescribe medications like methadone. I believe Methadone is denied to detainees in Grampian!

In my opinion, Police Scotland is complacent with NHS Grampian in breaching detainees Human Rights, the Istanbul Protocol and the Mandela Rules 24-25. Ironically the Police who uphold the law are breaking it and NHS Grampian purposely cause harm to the detainees. This is discrimination on a major level.

I also note that this seems to be in defiance of Wenner v Germany in the Court of Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights found Germany guilty of breaching Article 3 of the Human Rights Act in September 2016 by denying a prisoner Wenner methadone. In Law, Article 3 is an absolute. The excuse that NHS Grampian as I understand are thinking to incorporate it into their unwritten policy is untenable and that Police allowed them to unbelievable.

The fact that pregnant detainees receive methadone in custody is discrimination, both members of the local community and prisoners in HMP Grampian receive methadone and NHS Grampian in a document about prisoners state it is a duty under the Mandela Rules to provide methadone. I believe the phase what sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

The medical triage of detainees by, in my opinion, unqualified police staff who report to doctors or nurses at a remote custody suite is doubtful in law combined with the police supervision being remote is also dubious. The combination of both is obscene.

If the Petition Committee clarify and enforce the Official Guidance, Scotland will become a more civilised country and more importantly drug death and suicides will drop.

To quote Nelson Mandela  “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.