Deaths at young offenders institution in Scotland ‘could have been avoided’
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Call for prisons to lose immunity from prosecution after report into suicides of Katie Allan, 20, and William Lindsay, 16, at Polmont. The deaths of two young people in custody could have been avoided, according to the long-awaited report of a joint inquiry into their suicides within months of one another.
The 419-page document, which identified “a catalogue of failures” in the system that was charged with their care, prompted their families’ lawyer to call on the UK government to end prisons’ immunity from prosecution. Katie Allan, 20, and William Lindsay, 16, were able to kill themselves at Polmont young offenders institution near Falkirk in 2018 despite staff having been alerted to their specific vulnerabilities.
At an emotionally charged press conference, both their families welcomed the damning report by Sheriff Simon Collins KC and demanded a complete overhaul of Scotland’s fatal accident inquiry (FAI) system to make its recommendations legally binding. John Reilly, William’s brother, described how his “baby brother, a terrified little boy” was left alone in a cell for 10 hours at a time. William died three days after he was sent to Polmont because there was no space in a children’s secure unit, having walked into a police station with a knife.
Reilly said his mother and two sisters had all died since 2018, none of them able to come to terms with his death and the unanswered questions around it. The FAI, which was held last January, had heard how William was removed from observations on the morning before he died, despite his lengthy history of self-harming behaviour, and Collins noted that “almost all of those who interacted with him were at fault”.
