5 January 2022

(quote)
In my second week in Saughton jail, a prisoner pushed open the door of my cell
and entered during the half hour period when we were unlocked to shower and use
the hall telephone in the morning. I very much disliked the intrusion, and there
was something in the attitude of the man which annoyed me - wheedling would
perhaps be the best description. He asked if I had a bible I could lend
him. Anxious to get him out of my cell, I replied no, I did not. He shuffled
off.

I immediately started to feel pangs of guilt. I did in fact have a bible, which
the chaplain had given me. It was, I worried, a very bad thing to deny religious
solace to a man in prison, and I really had no right to act the way I did, based
on an irrational distrust. I went off to take a shower, and on the way back to
my cell was again accosted by the man.

"If you don't have a Bible," he said, "Do you have any other book with thin
pages?"

He wanted the paper either to smoke drugs, or more likely to make tabs from a
boiled up solution of a drug.

You cannot separate the catastrophic failure of the Scottish penal system -
Scotland has the highest jail population per capita in all of Western Europe -
from the catastrophic failure of drugs policy in Scotland. 90% of the scores of
prisoners I met and spoke with had serious addiction problems. Every one of
those was a repeat offender, back in jail, frequently for the sixth, seventh or
eighth time. How addiction had led them to jail varied. They stole, often
burgled, to feed their addiction. They dealt drugs in order to pay for their own
use. They had been involved in violence - frequently domestic - while under the
influence.

I had arrived in Saughton jail on Sunday 1 August. After being "seen off" by a
crowd of about 80 supporters outside St Leonards police station, I had handed
myself in there at 11am, as ordered by the court. The police were expecting me,
and had conducted me to a holding area, where my possessions were searched and I
was respectfully patted down. The police were very polite. I had been expecting
to spend the night in a cell at St Leonards and to be taken to jail in a prison
van on the Monday morning. This is what both my lawyers and a number of
policemen had explained would happen.

In fact I was only half an hour in St Leonards before being put in a police car
and taken to Saughton. This was pretty well unique - the police do not conduct
people to prison in Scotland. At no stage was I manacled or handled and the
police officers were very friendly. Reception at Saughton prison - where
prisoners are not usually admitted on a Sunday - were also very polite, even
courteous. None of this is what happens to an ordinary prisoner, and gives the
lie to the Scottish government's claim that I was treated as one.

I was not fingerprinted either in the police station or the jail, on the grounds
I was a civil prisoner with no criminal conviction. At reception my overcoat and
my electric toothbrush were taken from me, but my other clothing, notebook and
book were left with me.

I was then taken to a side office to see a nurse. She asked me to list my
medical conditions, which I did, including pulmonary hypertension,
anti-phospholipid syndrome, Barrett's oesophagus, atrial fibrillation, hiatus
hernia, dysarthria and a few more. As she typed them in to her computer, options
appeared on a dropdown menu for her to select the right one. It was plain to me
she had no knowledge of several of these conditions, and certainly no idea how
to spell them

The nurse cut me off very bluntly when I politely asked her a question about the
management of my heart and blood conditions while in prison, saying someone
would be round to see me in the morning. She then took away from me all the
prescription medications I had brought with me, saying new ones would be issued
by the prison medical services. She also took my pulse oximeter, saying the
prison would not permit it, as it had batteries. I said it had been given to me
by my consultant cardiologist, but she insisted it was against prison
regulations.
(/quote)
-- Cont'd at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/01/your-man-in-saughton-jail-part-1/