Grieving families demand meeting with Nicola Sturgeon

Familes demand meeting with Nicola Sturgeon
Image Credit @ Justice for Allan Marshall

source: Scottish Daily Express
published: 30 October 2022

The {grieving} families of two men who died in police custody have delivered a letter to the First Minister’s residence in Edinburgh, as they requested a meeting with her and the Justice Secretary.

Allan Marshall and Sheku Bayoh both died in custody in 2015. Mr Marshall, 30, was being held on remand at HMP Edinburgh in March 2015 when he suffered a cardiac arrest during a lengthy struggle with staff.

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The faces of death row in Texas

Legal Time for justicesources: Texas Tribune
published: 18 July 2022

Here is a look at the 194 inmates currently on Texas’ death row. Texas, which reinstated the death penalty in 1976, has the most active execution chamber in the nation. On average, these inmates have spent 17 YEARS, 6 MONTHS on death row. Though 12 percent of the state’s residents are black, 45 PERCENT of death row inmates are.

How many doses of lethal injection drugs does Texas have?
12 doses in stock / 4 SCHEDULED EXECUTIONS. (read more)

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No births behind bars: The scandal of imprisoning pregnant women

Woman in Prisonsource: Counterfire
published: 31 March 2022

Over the past three years, two babies born to women serving custodial sentences in prison have died. In 2019, a woman gave birth alone in a prison cell at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, Europe’s largest women’s prison, without access to a midwife or any maternity care.

The baby was born in the early hours of the morning but by the time prison staff visited the woman’s cell the baby was unresponsive. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman initially refused to investigate, claiming that such an investigation was not within their remit. Nine months later, another baby was stillborn at HMP Styal, to a woman who was unaware she was pregnant.

Questions are being raised once again over why pregnant women are incarcerated in the first place. Women make up about 5% of the prison population, with the vast majority – some 82% of the 7,745 women incarcerated in 2018 – sentenced for petty crimes and non-violent offences such as shoplifting.

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