• 2 hours ago
FAI Katie Allan and William Lindsay

Polmont deaths of Katie Allan and William Lindsay 'could have been avoided', damning inquiry report finds

The deaths of two young people who took their own lives while in custody in a Scottish young offenders institution “might have been avoided”, an inquiry has found.

Katie Allan, 21, and William Brown, 16, also known as William Lindsay, took their own lives within months of each other while held at Young Offenders Institution (YOI) Polmont in 2018.

Ms Allan, a student at Glasgow University, was found dead in her cell on June 4 while serving a 16-month sentence for drink-driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

Mr Brown, who had been in care repeatedly, was found dead in his cell on October 7, three days after being admitted as there was no space in a children’s secure unit, having walked into a police station with a knife.

A fatal accident inquiry (FAI) into their deaths was held at Falkirk Sheriff Court, led by Sheriff SG Collins KC.

In his determination, which was published on Friday, Sheriff Collins described a “catalogue of individual and collective failures by prison and healthcare staff” at the facility.

One of the main issues, he said, was the effectiveness of the Talk To Me (TTM) suicide prevention strategy, through which at-risk prisoners are subjected to increased observation and checks.

He said Ms Allan had not been considered a “risk” when she was admitted to Polmont and so was not placed on TTM.

However, he said that during her incarceration there was a “systemic failure” by prison staff to complete “concern forms” that could have triggered the TTM process, pointing to a number of incidents recorded by prison staff that should have been red flags.

These included, he said, the fact Ms Allan was being bullied by other prisoners, distress caused by hair loss resulting from alopecia, her distress at being body (strip) searched by prison staff, and the failure of her appeal against her conviction.

Her weight also dropped from 65kg to 58kg during her 12 weeks at the facility, which Sheriff Collins said should have been a “cause for concern” by staff.

Mr Brown, on the other hand, was placed on TTM on admission to Polmont only to be removed from it the next morning, despite presenting as a “very high risk” individual.

He was also not placed back on TTM when “further information” about his level of risk was provided to prison staff by a social worker later that day.

Sheriff Collins said: “Had Katie been put on TTM on the night of June 3-4, 2018, and had William not been removed from it prior to the night of October 6-7, 2018, there was a realistic possibility that their deaths might have been avoided.”

The sheriff also described as “defective” the systems for sharing information between the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) and other bodies, including courts and external agencies, about prisoner risk.

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Transcript
00:00For the families of Katie Allen and William Lindsay, we had the determination for the
00:04fatal accident inquiry disclosed to us by the courts at 10 a.m. yesterday morning,
00:10and the families were given just 24 hours to digest the contents of the findings.
00:14At 419 pages, it is the most extensive and robust findings in over half a century,
00:21since the 1976 Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiry Scotland Act was updated in the law.
00:27I want to begin, on behalf of the families, to thank Sheriff Simon Collins, who has not shied
00:32away from delivering the most robust and devastating indictment on Scottish prisons in over
00:38a century. The families also wish to thank the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain, as well as the
00:44Advocate Deputy, Leanne Cross, who did everything possible to ensure that the truth emerged.
00:50Katie's family also want to thank our late friend, the Reverend Stuart Macquarie,
00:55a beautiful and kind man who was in post at Glasgow University and never gave up on Katie.
00:59He did his very best to support her through her terrifying ordeal. The families will never forget
01:06those handful of individual prison officers who, despite the cruel and inhumane regime of the
01:12Scottish Prison Service, tried their best for Katie and for William. The family of William
01:17Lindsay want to thank those social workers, including those from Includum, who till William's
01:22very last moments never gave up trying to get the Scottish Prison Service to listen. As for the
01:28Scottish Prison Service, former prison governors, Brenda Stewart, senior management at Polmont,
01:36the Forth Valley Health Board, as well as the Scottish Government, First Ministers, former
01:41First Ministers and successive Justice Ministers, you should all hang your heads in shame. You are
01:47complicit in the deaths that continue to take place. You did more than fail the most vulnerable
01:53people in our society. You ignored their cries for help. We do not have a death sentence in this
01:58country, but for Katie and William, that is what you served on. The families do not want your empty
02:04soulless wells of sorrow and condolences. For over six years, you denied the truth, you lied and
02:10conducted a whitewash, you gaslighted the families, and the fact is that some of you should be facing
02:16criminal prosecution, but whilst Crown immunity remains, you will remain secure in your lack of
02:22accountability. To be clear, the Crown Office told us before the start of the fatal accident inquiry
02:28there was more than sufficient evidence to prosecute the Scottish Prison Service
02:33for the deaths of Katie and William under health and safety laws, but because the Scottish Prison
02:38Service has Crown immunity, nothing could be done. It's time this archaic law, this license to kill,
02:45was changed by the UK Government for all prisons throughout the United Kingdom. Our next stage is
02:52to take this to the United Kingdom Prime Minister and ask him to fulfil the promise made some 20
02:58years ago by a Labour government to remove Crown immunity from UK prisons. A message for our
03:03Justice Secretary in Scotland, enough of your letters to the UK Government. Nobody is listening.
03:09We expected much more from you. On the last occasion, Humza Yousaf, as First Minister, wrote to Rishi
03:15Sunak and was ignored. On this occasion, we can tell you that we are assured of the support of
03:20every political party in opposition that support the removal of Crown immunity that grants the
03:26Scottish Prison Service, as far as the families are concerned, a license to kill. I would urge
03:31you in the media to take your time to read the report. It should not be allowed to gather dust,
03:36or more young people would die as already have since Katie and William's suicides. Whilst it's
03:40not the job of the Fatal Accident Inquiry to apportion blame, it is clear from the Sheriff's
03:46findings that had the Scottish Prison Service simply done its job, then Katie Allen, William
03:52Lindsay may have been alive today. The failures were systemic, they were catastrophic, they were
03:58incompetent, individuals either ignored processes or simply conducted a cover-up. They failed to
04:05keep records, their systems were archaic and their failure to act was, as described by one prison
04:11officer, criminally negligent. To quote Sheriff Collins, it would not have required ingenuity or
04:18modification to remove ligature points from the cells from which over 80 percent of suicides
04:25happen in our prisons. The talk to me strategy is a farce and not given for purpose. The prison
04:31case conference set up to help vulnerable prisoners are an absolute farce and not fit for
04:36purpose. They are supposed to prevent suicides but were most cruelly summed up by a five-minute
04:43tick-box conference into William Lindsay, held within two days of his arrival, that had failed
04:49to consider him a suicide risk. Five minutes. Read from pages 121 to 126 to see the discussion of
04:581,000 pages of William's social work records, in and out of home since the age of three,
05:03the Scottish Prison Service didn't bother. They gave William five minutes. They never bothered
05:09to check that in April 2016 he took an overdose, that in June 2016 he was taken to hospital by the
05:16police after he threatened an overdose, that in February 2017 he was referred to child health
05:21services due to suicidal thoughts. In March 2017 he was further referred after telling a teacher
05:27he would kill himself. In May 2017 he was taken to Glasgow Road by police after being removed by
05:33the police from a train track saying he wanted to die. In May 2017 removed from train tracks
05:38and then taken to hospital. In May 2017 placed in St Mary's Kendal secure accommodation due to
05:45suicide idolation. In July 2017 in hospital after taking excessive alcohol drugs and wanting to die.
05:52In September 2017 in hospital after drugs and walking the path of moving cars and in November
05:572017 in hospital by police after trying to cut his own throat with a knife and in November 2017
06:04and January 2018 police attended after he tried to get struck by cars and in May 2018 police and
06:10hospital after self-harming with knife. All of this information and so much more was available
06:16to the prison officers had they wished to listen, had they chosen to listen, had the SBS had
06:22assistance in place to take this information. The social workers were ignored, they were denied,
06:27you did not need to be a professor to know that this child's life was at risk. In Katie's case
06:34the red flags were there in her medical records, again like William they ignored her weight loss,
06:39her loss of hair, repeated bullying, even being told by a prison officer as she tried to study
06:43for exams and hoping to go back to university that she had too many books in her cell. The
06:48targeted strict searching of a terrified young woman that humiliated and distressed her and then
06:54ultimately the double bunk beds and ligature points that resulted in hers and in William's
06:58death. All the warning signs were ignored. There was nothing inevitable about William and Katie
07:05taking their own lives as there is nothing inevitable about every suicide that Linda Allen
07:11and others have read through in the fatal action inquires that have taken place over the years.
07:15It was clear to anybody that cared to look that they were vulnerable and at risk of taking their
07:20own lives. Locking up people in dungeons of despair doesn't rehabilitate anyone. It institutionalizes
07:28violence and it increases the risk of suicide. The families of Katie and William for years have held
07:34the Scottish Prison Service, the health service, directly responsible for their deaths and today
07:40the findings of Sherry Collins vindicated that belief. Inhumane and shabby treatment of Christine
07:46Lindsay, the mother of 16-year-old William, reflects how the same system miserably failed her
07:53miserably failed her son. I have so much to say in regard to what really has happened here but
07:58and honestly I can't figure out what because we've still got so many questions. There's questions
08:03about why could this ever be able to happen to a 16-year-old guy. He was my baby brother, he was a
08:09terrified little boy, he was left alone in a cell for up to 10 hours. He was a kid. There's no
08:16there's no answers for it. Six and a half years for the determination into Katie and William's death.
08:22Today our wait is over. There's nothing that we can do. The Crown Office can't do anything
08:27all because they have crown immunity and all we can do is give them a censure which is like a
08:32wrap in the knuckles in the headmaster's office and the health and safety executive, real questions
08:37to be asked about them as in what do they actually do because why didn't they get off their
08:41own backside and go and investigate. When was the last time they investigated prisons and it's
08:46it's an abhorrent situation. It's an anomaly and as a conflict dentist I still remember the words
08:51of former Chief Constable Ian Livingstone saying to me some two years ago how is it possible that
08:57his police stations can hold people in custody for 24 or for 48 hours and they can be prosecuted
09:03if something goes wrong. He can be prosecuted as a Chief Constable but for some reason our prisons
09:09are immune. So in terms of blame where could we stop? So is it the Scottish ministers? Is it the
09:16governor or was it the governor at the time of Katie's death? Is it the personal officer that
09:24locked her up and thought everything was okay and went home to his family? Is it the girls that were
09:29bullying Katie? Is it who came from probably horrific backgrounds themselves? Is it me
09:38you know when I gave Katie into trouble at the visit? Is it you know is it something Stuart
09:43and I did as parents because we've heard lots of that in the media. We're complete failures
09:48as parents and that's why Katie died. So where do we stop? You know who not there's no
09:56what's happened is a complete failure, systemic failure across the prison service
10:03and what we're trying to do is to highlight that so no other young people die again.

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