Human Rights

Payments for prison ‘cold turkey’

The prisoners claim their human rights were violated

Ex-addict interview
Six prisoners and former inmates forced to stop taking drugs by going “cold turkey” are to receive payments, sources at the High Court have said.
The unspecified settlement followed claims the practice amounted to assault and their human rights were breached.

The claimants had been using heroin and other opiates.

They were said to have been receiving alternative treatment before coming under the responsibility of the Prison Service in England and Wales.

They said once inside they were then made to go “cold turkey” which means the drug was suddenly withdrawn or cut short and they faced detoxification.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the Home Office could be setting a “disastrous” precedent by settling out-of-court.

A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment on the case.

‘Sharp detoxification’

The proceedings focused on six test cases chosen from a total pool of 198 claimants.

Many had been taking the heroin substitute methadone.

The claimants were bringing the action based on trespass, because they say they did not consent to the treatment, and for alleged clinical negligence.

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Their barrister Richard Hermer told an earlier hearing in May: “Many of the prisoners were receiving methadone treatment before they entered prison and were upset at the short period of treatment using opiates they encountered in jail.

“Imposing the short, sharp detoxification is the issue.”

Drug-related crime

Mr Davis suggested the government did not want to be “embarrassed by losing such a case under its own human rights legislation”.

“Drugs are a scourge on society and completely undermine all our other efforts to fight crime. By doing this Mr Reid would be letting down the taxpayer, the victims of these offenders and the drug addicts themselves,” he added.

Drug detoxification in prison is second-rate in standard and woefully short in its duration

Mark Leech, Prisons Handbook

Prison Reform Trust director Juliet Lyon said the case could see courts “pause for thought” before using jail terms as a way of making sure an offender receives treatment.

“Our overcrowded jails are awash with petty, persistent offenders who commit crime to feed their drug habit,” she said.

According to the editor of the Prisons Handbook, Mark Leech, two-thirds of crime is drug-related and Home Office research has shown that 643 drug addicts were responsible for well over 70,000 offences in one three-month period.

“Prisoners have the right to receive exactly the same type and standard of healthcare in prison as they would receive in the community,” he said.

“Yet for the most part drug detoxification in prison is second-rate in standard and woefully short in its duration.”

The National Drug Prevention Alliance said prisoners should not be able to get drugs in prison.

Peter Stoker of the group said: “Yes we want a health-orientated regime of treatment for prisoners, but we don’t want something that bows down to their existing drug abuse and says we can’t do anything about it.”

The charity Drugscope said the government had pledged £28m funding for a treatment programme for inmates this financial year but the budget was later reduced.

The Department of Health said it was spending £12m in the current financial year on the scheme and the level of funding would be maintained in 2007/08.

The programme, supplemented by the Home Office, aims to increase drug treatment for prisoners to allow them to fight their addiction before their release into the community, a spokeswoman said.

In the wake of this latest fiasco by our courts of law, I really feel that it’s time to either abolish altogether the human rights laws, or to make them un-usable, un-approachable to anyone living, as they say, at the pleasure of her majesty!!! or in laymans terms, in prison! People are in prison for a reason!

Human right!!! what about the human rights of the people they no doubt robbed, mugged and god knows what else to fund their sick habit on the outside!!! No one hears about THEIR human rights!! if anyone should get payouts from this it’s them, not the scum bags who made their own choices in life to become an addict in the first place. I don’t believe anyone who says oh I started on cannabis and it was that made me go on to stronger harder drugs, its bo IIocks!!!!