Meaningful mental health treatment in prison is mostly fiction, as numerous reports paint an extremely dire tableau. 17-year old Stephen Downing had learning difficulties and a reading age of 11. After nine hours of intense police interrogation, he eventually confessed to the murder of a 32-year old legal secretary. There was just one small problem: he didn’t actually commit the crime. Downing spent the next 27 years of his life in gaol before his conviction was finally overturned in 2002. Similarly, 23-year-old Stephen Kiszko confessed to the murder of an 11-year-old girl under duress and spent sixteen years in prison, before forensic evidence revealed it was not possible for him to have been the killer. Although these are remarkable cases they aren’t, unfortunately, isolated ones. Those who live with mental health conditions are particularly vulnerable in police custody, and indeed throughout the criminal justice system. That being so, the […]