The deeply disturbing case of Annelise Sanderson, who committed suicide at HMP Styal, invites comparison with an equally disturbing one at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey (“Staff at Annelise jail lacked anti-suicide training”, News, last week). Unlike in Annelise’s case, however, where a report has been published in timely fashion, we in the vicinity of Bronzefield have been waiting almost two years for any public explanation of why a pregnant woman inmate had to labour all night in her cell and why her baby then died. In both places there was a palpable lack of structured, regular checks on prisoners. As Deborah Coles of the charity Inquest says: “The same systemic issues are repeating themselves ... nobody is held to account for the repeated

Source: The Times August 07, 2021 23:03 UTC