Jailhouse Rock Bottom
Mindroom sits on the Cross Party Group for Learning Disabilities in the Scottish Parliament. One of the many ways in which we collaborate with other groups and organisations. The CPG is masterly chaired by Jackie Baillie, Labour MSP for Dumbarton, who has a longstanding focus on and interest in learning disabilities.
I have said many times and for long time, that I think Jackie should become the next leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Jackie Baillie is a politician who speaks ‘normal speak’, in other words she does not trade in clichés and badly researched statements. Plus, and most importantly, she has a great sense of humour. Anyway, she claims she does not want to take on the challenge of the leadership, as she says that chairing the CPG for Learning Disabilities and other such responsibilities are more important to her. Which is very nice for the CPG – and a rather endearing political chess move.
At the latest CPG meeting we listened to a very good, but very disturbing talk on the prevalence of learning disabilities in Scottish prisons. Gary Doherty, a Nurse working in Greenock Prison, has worked with prisoners with learning disabilities for 10 years. His collated statistics and extensive experience of what goes on behind the high walls of our prisons makes for scary listening.
Out of the 8,000 prisoners in Scottish prisons, an estimated 1,000 have a learning disability. That is a conservative estimate he says. And yes, Im sure it is. Another hidden figure must be all the prisoners who ‘simply’ have a learning difficulty, ie anything above an IQ of 70 (which is the official cutoff between disability and difficulty). There is a Swedish study, by a team in Gothenburg, looking into the prevalence of these difficulties within the Swedish criminal justice services. Indications half way through the study show that more than 50% of the prison population have or have had an ADHD diagnosis.
Gary Doherty’s statistics tells us that there is very little help and understanding for prisoners with learning disabilities within the prison service.
Mindroom statistics tells us that learning difficulties are one of the big public health problem of our time.
The annual cost per prisoner here in Scotland is £32,000.
The emotional cost to each prisoner is incalculable.
I have attached here below Gary Doherty’s excellent ppp which contains important and easy to read information.
Just click on the title for downloading.
