THE sudden announcement that the rightly renowned 218 service for women offenders in Glasgow is to close is shocking. The decision needs to be reconsidered or, at the very least, made much more transparent than it has been.
No-one disputes the challenging financial climate for both central and local government, but in what way is it justifiable to dispense so peremptorily with the services of a centre of excellence in this way? Its provider, Turning Point – and its staff – deserved better.
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On the basis of need Glasgow would seem to require more 218-like services rather than fewer. The present service is closer in spirit to the supportive and preventive facilities called for in the 2012 Commission on Women Offenders than the Prison Service-run Community Custody Unit for women recently opened in Maryhill, at a cost of £8 million and annual running costs of more than £500,000.
Does disinvesting in the 218 service have anything to with the CCU’s existence? Worse still, has central government been forced into unacceptable savings because of the rising costs of HMP Glasgow, up from the original £100m to £400m by 2027? We should be told.
Mike Nellis
Emeritus Professor of criminal and community justice
University of Strathclyde
IT is relatively easy to attack Tory minister Penny Mordaunt after she claimed that Scots will have “somewhere safe and warm to take heroin”. Perhaps those so quick to express their moral outrage should also ask why the funding has been pulled from Glasgow’s Turning Point 218 women’s recovery service. This lifeline service for some of the city’s most vulnerable women will close after almost 20 years due to budget cuts by Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership (GHSCP).
I tend to think twice before swallowing an aspirin and have been fortunate, so far, to reach my mid sixties without the regular assistance of the pharmaceutical industry. The thought of self-injecting anything into my veins fills me with horror, let alone a concoction of unknown substances supplied by a network of criminals who care little for their end users/customers.
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The proposed site for the UK’s first sanctioned drugs consumption room is Hunter Street Health Centre in the east end of Glasgow. The same GHSCP will cover the costs of redesigning the building, creating a reception and injecting area with booths as well as treatment rooms and a recovery area. The Scottish Government will provide a budget of £2.3 million a year for three years.
It would seem unrealistic to think that any drug users from outwith the east end of Glasgow will travel to this facility. As users will have to bring their own supply of drugs to inject, there will be no reduction in the profits of the local drug dealers. One could argue that with the decrease in drug deaths forecast as a result of this facility, their clients will live longer and generate even greater profits for the dealers and their suppliers.
I suspect a case could be made for the drugs to be supplied by the centre so that at least there would be a guarantee of quality and consistent strength of what is being injected. As a society we seem to have accepted the regular supply of methadone from pharmacies, so why not heroin from consumption rooms?
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Overall I feel uneasy about the proposal. It seems to give a nod of government approval to the illicit drugs “industry”. It sends out a subtle message that the consumption of contaminated opiates is now almost acceptable. It appears to be a small-scale, headline-grabbing, sticking plaster for what is a massive international problem.
A cynical person might suggest it is a way of avoiding the real but far more expensive solution to the problem which involves providing a much larger number of drug rehabilitation places – to get users off drugs and not encourage them to continue to take more under Scottish Government supervision.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
I LISTENED to Radio 4 news on Friday informing us of the return of hostages to Israel. Never before had I heard mention of the Palestinian hostages in Israeli prisons. Palestinian children who threw stones at tanks were locked up until adulthood for years. Since the beginning of the Intifada in September 2000 more than 2500 children have been arrested and held hostage in Israeli prisons for fighting back against tanks.
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It is time all the aggressive actions of the Israeli Defence Force were made known to the rest of the world, and time we had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Israel to force Israelis to face up to the fact of the oppression of Palestinians. No longer must we listen to “Israel must have the right to defend itself and its people”.
The original residents of Palestine also had the right to defend themselves, but they did not have the military forces or the arms to stop the takeover of their country. The horrific story of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a crime against humanity that Israel wants to deny and cause the world to forget. If the Israelis want to be free of the threat from Palestinian terrorism, they must create a JUST PEACE. If there is no justice, there can be no peace.
Margaret Forbes
Blanefield
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