A study of 97 deaths in Scottish prisons in the period 1999-2003 by Cambridge Professor Sheila Bird, vice-president of the Royal Statistical Society, has found that some Fatal Accident Inquiries do not report for well over a year after the death of the prisoner.

There were 19 deaths in Scottish jails in the last year, 11 of which were suicides. Bird also found that in some cases where sheriffs made recommendations after deaths, these reports were not widely disseminated.

Bird says:

“The sheriff is reliant to some extent, of course, on how long it takes for a postmortem, which usually shouldn’t be very long and toxicology reports and for the parties to the inquiry to have sufficient time to bring forward any evidence they may consider relevant.

“But those issues shouldn’t normally take a vast amount of time. And then when you get a very long period, particularly when there is a long ‘dissemination interval’ from the end of the FAI to the written report, it is extremely odd that that interval should extend beyond 90 days because that is merely writing up the evidence, the evidence that has already been read.”

A review of the entire Fatal Accident Inquiry headed by Lord Cullen is currently under way.