IAPDC calls for thorough review of impact of COVID-19 in joint letter to Health and Justice secretaries

 ‘It is time for a thorough review of the impact of extreme imprisonment on the mental and physical health of people detained by the state’, say independent government advisory panel and health and justice partners

 

Marking two years after the introduction of restricted COVID-19 regimes in prisons, the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody (IAPDC) have today (Friday 8 April) written to the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and the Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, to call for urgent steps to be taken to address the impact of restrictive and extreme imprisonment imposed during the pandemic and in many cases still in place.

 

Demonstrating clear consensus on the need to act to protect the lives of people in custody, the letter is jointly signed by the heads of Royal Medical Colleges, scrutiny bodies, unions and staff associations, and health and justice charities.

 

The IAPDC and co-signatories call for:

  • immediate additional mental health support for prisoners

  • individual mental and physical health checks for everyone in custody

  •   support for frontline health and justice staff.

Speaking today, Juliet Lyon, Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, said:

‘During the pandemic, people in the community have spoken about loss of freedom, loss of choice, loss of agency and identity. Many have spoken of this time as ‘like being in prison’. For people effectively held in a prison within a prison, confined to small, poorly ventilated cells for up to 23 hours a day for as much as two years, these are still desperate times. The punishment of imprisonment is loss of liberty—not permanently impaired mental and physical health and not, at worst, loss of life’.

 The joint letter maintains that:

‘It is now time for a thorough review of the impact of this form of extreme imprisonment on the mental and physical health of people detained by the state and the remedial action that would be prompted by such a review’.

Read the letter in full (link opens as a PDF in a new window)

COVID-19, Mental health, Prison, Cross-cutting, Secure healthAdrian Blake