Prisoners receive £750,000 payment for forced 'cold turkey'
Tuesday, 14 Nov 2006 13:54
Charity claims prisoners are not receiving adequate drug treatment behind bars
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Nearly 200 prisoners who were forced to go 'cold turkey' from their opiate addictions have been awarded £750,000 in compensation from the government.
The group of 197 prisoners argued that their human rights had been violated and that the standard of care they received was poor and amounted to assault.
Mr Justice Langstaff formally agreed the payments at the high court today. Each of the claimants, of whom all except two have agreed to the amount offered, will receive around £3,800.
Richard Hermer, a barrister representing six of the claimants, argued that the settlement was tantamount to the Home Office admitting that its policy on drug-dependent prisoners was unlawful.
"[This] inevitably means that such a policy must be changed with immediate effect," he said, in comments reported by the Press Association.
Yesterday the Home Office agreed to settle six cases out of court on the issue, issuing a statement that "it was decided, however reluctantly, to settle these cases outside of court in order to minimise costs to the taxpayer".
The shadow home secretary David Davis said that the settlement would set a "disastrous" precedent.
"Drugs are a scourge on society and completely undermine all our other efforts to fight crime. This would be a massive failure of political nerve by [home secretary John] Reid and a massive failure in his core duty to protect the public."
The payment comes a day after drugs information charity DrugScope claimed that the NHS deficit has led to a "drastic reduction" in the funding for drug treatment programmes for prisoners.
It argued that the budget for the integrated drug treatment system (IDTS), a programme to improve the quality of drug treatment service in prisons, has been cut by 60 per cent from £28 million to £12 million.
But the Department of Health (DoH) has denied that there has been a cut in funding drug treatment in prisons and that a programme supplemented by the Home Office allowed inmates to tackle their addiction before their release back into society.
"The commitment to fund this programme for both this financial year and the next, has in no way been affected by reforms within the NHS," a DoH spokesman said.