Jenny’s Pennies

A 23 year old man hung himself in a bathroom in the jail in Mariestad. When the personnel found the man, they left him hanging there, locked the door and then called an ambulance. The paramedics managed to restore cardiac activity, but the man died two days later in a hospital. During the nine minutes that it took for the ambulance to arrive, the jail personnel did nothing, they merely let the man hang.

What the hell were they thinking? That he would escape? That someone else would try to save him (and that would be a bad thing)? That it wasn’t their job to do anything about it? That he obviously wanted to kill himself, so they did him a service by leaving him there? That only trained medical personnel would be able to take him down? The incompetence and negligence is so frightening.

This is only the latest of a series of examples of how bad our correctional treatment system is working. Only in the last few days, it was exposed that in 2005, a seriously ill man with pneumonia were left to slowly die in a jail cell in Nyköping. The guards thought that the man had drug abstinence so they did nothing about it, although several doctors say that his symptoms were nothing like those typically associated with abstinence. They guards documented the man’s condition in a protocol, but they didn’t care enough to call a doctor and explain the symptoms, or to take him to a hospital.

Both these men could be alive today had the personnel done their job properly. And the main responsibility lies with the director-general of the Swedish Prisons and Probations Administration, Lars Nylén. Some of his staff is clearly untrained on what to do in an emergency; the policies and protocols on how to handle suicide attempts, ill detainees and other such situation are clearly lacking or not communicated down to the personnel; and some personnel seems to have a frightening disregard for human life, which means they are unfit for their job. Or maybe they though that this was a proper punishment for the jailed person, in which case they are also unfit for their job.

Media: SvD, HD, Sydsvenskan, SR Ekot
Fellow bloggers: Jinge

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 11:06 am and is filed under Crime, Health, Human rights, Stupidity, Sweden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.