Decision Report 201303972

Summary

Mr C, who is a prisoner, complained that the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) had decided that he no longer needed to be managed under their process for prisoners at risk of suicide or self-harm. Mr C had been managed under this process for a number of days, as he had carried out acts of self-harm. During that period, two medical reports had been obtained identifying that he was at risk of further self-harm, and successive case conferences had also reached the decision that he was at risk of this.

However, a fifth case conference decided that Mr C was not at risk. Despite this, the action plan that the SPS put in place after this decision outlined a number of potential risks and risk management interventions. Mr C carried out a further act of self-harm and was put back on the process. We considered that the SPS should have obtained a further medical report on Mr C before deciding that he no longer needed to be managed under the process. There was no evidence that they had done so and we upheld the complaint, as well as his complaint that they had not responded to some of the questions on his complaint form.

Recommendations

We recommended that the SPS:

• make the staff involved in the decision aware of our finding on the matter; and
• issue a written apology to Mr C.