Drug-addicted prisoners forced to go “cold turkey” at Shrewsbury Prison received compensation payments totalling £38,071 in the last year, official Government figures revealed today.
The Ministry of Justice has refused to comment on individual cases.
The payments stem from a test case by six prisoners settled out of court in November 2006 by the Home Office.
They came after a High Court judge approved damages after their claims the practice amounted to an assault and breach of human rights.
Payments totalling £750,000 subsequently went to 197 prisoners forced to stop taking drugs at jails across England and Wales - including Shrewsbury - under the Opiate Dependent Prison Litigation.
The statistics show nationally more than £2 million was paid in compensation by publicly-run prisons in 2006/07 - down 54 per cent on the previous year’s pay-outs which totalled £4.4 million.
Today Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski criticised the payments.
He said: “I’m quite shocked that amount of money is being spent for compensation for people coming off drugs.
“The idea that people are demanding compensation for coming off drugs is difficult to stomach.”
Payments were made in and out-of-court for claims ranging from “miscellaneous injury”, assaults and unlawful detention to lost property and slips, trips and falls.
There were three claims lodged in 2005/06, rising to eight in 2006/07, by inmates at the county’s two jails, which also includes Stoke Heath in Market Drayton.
Across the country, these went up from 973 to 1,034 during the same period.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw, released the data to MPs in response to a parliamentary question.
A Prison Service spokesman said: “Each Compensation claim received by the Prison Service is treated on its individual merits.
“Legal advice is sought and on the basis of that advice, a decision is made whether or not the claim should be defended.”
By Sunita Patel and John Kirk
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14 Comments
no prizes for guessing what they will spend it on
Without knowing the full circumstances of the cases involved it’s difficult to understrand why this was done. I would prefer to see any available money put into proper treatment to get people off drugs - they cost a huge amount in terms of petty crime, and structured programmes have a much greater prospect of success than ‘cold turkey’ approaches. Of course it would be better if we didn’t have to spend money on such things at all - at least a structured approach is more likely to be money well-spent. Giving junkies money solves nothing for them or for the rest of us - it simply ends up in the pockets of their suppliers.
The payouts were compensation Peter because their human rights were infringed.
I would of said that prison and cold turkey is doing the drug addict a favour! rehab i should imagine is not cheap so shouldnt they be paying the apropriate bodies instead of the other way around? Another STUPID hiccup in our justice system!
David, “human rights” I didnt realise it was a human right to take ilegal drugs.!!
his cough does upset him, what can mother get him. venos,venos. 1955 itv advert. could they not have been weaned onto benalin or something similar. cold turkey sounds cruel and neglectful,they are there to serve time for crimes not to be cruelly punished. do not agree with the payouts though
David - I do understand that the money was in compensation for supposed breaches of their human rights - but it’s difficult to undestand what ‘rights’ were breached. Let us take smoking for example. Prisons are amongst the very few places where the smoking ban isn’t in effect - but prisoners still have to pay for their tobacco from money earned whilst in prison - no-one gives them fags for free! Similarly with alcohol - it is absolutely forbideen in prison - even for known alcoholics.
I indicated in my earlier mail that I approve of proper drug rehab treatment for addicts in prison, but given that it isn’t always readily available to those outside prison it seems inconsistent that the lack of such treatments to those inside should be regarded as a breach of human rights.
Happy Days I was just explaining the situation, I certainly dont agree with it. As I understand it, the original six prisoners intended to take the matter to the European Courts claiming their human rights were infringed because they suffered while in jail because they were not given the drugs they were addicted to, or any alternative. Rather than fight this stupid situation, the Home Office backed down, thus opening the doors to all of these claims.
The root causes of addiction are complex and varied, but the realities of drug dependence are largely common place. Whether the average man in the street realises it or not the truth is that drug dependence lies behind the vast majority of criminal behaviour – shop theft, burglary, theft from motor vehicles, robberies, prostitution, gun crime and other gangland activity – and is a key issue in how our system works to rehabilitate offenders.
“Suicide is Everyone’s Concern” was an excellent document published by HM Inspector of Prisons. A number of factors relating to self harm and suicide in prisons were looked at with the intention that each should be addressed to reduce such incidents. Included in this were properly medically supervised drug detoxification programmes.
In the NHS system a heroin addict admitted for detox can generally expect at least a 10 day course of supervised treatment in a hospital setting. In the prison system a similar period is now in place but that was not always so. Whatever the rights and wrongs of crime or the need to punish offenders sentencing does not include depriving offenders of necessary medical treatment.
Most prisoners have other complicated needs as well as addiction and unnecessarily having to go “cold turkey” when treatment options are available is antiquated and wrong. Whether these individuals were deserving of compensation is an issue for the courts, but better that than an apology at a coroner’s inquest.
Please remember these are people (not junkies) with rights to humane treatment that loss of liberty should not deny them.
Everyone deserves help and a second chance - but I know of several junkies who had help to get them off heroin - only to start their habits again months or even weeks later.
I have no sympathy for these peple at all. Nobody forces them to stick a needle in their arms.
Perhaps the answer is that if they must be awarded compensation, it is a condition that the the money is only to be spent on funding treatment?
So why dont they just book the treatment and pay for it instead of giving them the money? the goverment is wrong on this by a mile!!! they shouldnt be giving anything its there own fault for starting so in my opinion they should get off it there selfs not with our help - we didnt start them off on the drugs…..
Craig, I think money spent on getting people off drugs is money well-spent - even if only a proportion of cases are successful, the reduced cost in terms of drug-related crime would represent a good return on the investment. I don’t understand why they have to be given money as compensation - if they’ve been unfairly deprived of treatment, then why not just offer the treatment they’ve missed out on? I suspect that the real beneficiaries of such cases are the lawyers who pursue them.
A number of Chief Constables have now called for a discussion on the legal prescription of hard drugs for registered addicts. This is not as crazy an idea as it seems at first. It would completely disrupt the market for drugs, hit the dealers hard, and reduce significantly the huge amount of petty crime due to drug addiction. It would of course need to be handled with extreme care, but might also have positive knock-on effects much further afield - it could for example provide a stable market for the opium grown in Afghanistan - the Taleban make many recruits amongst opium growers who feel that the Western troops are a threat to their livelihoods - if we could make official use of their output then it would help stabilise that country’s economy, and thus the overall political situation there. It’s a radical approach, but at the very least, it’s worth considering.
I wonder if the amount paid out in compensation to prisoners for ‘infringement of their human rights’exceeds that paid out to seriously injured soliders who have lost limbs fighting in Irag? I wouldnt be surprisedif it does……..what a delightful society we live in.