High Court approves 750,000 pounds to prisoners forced off drugs

[renegades]

Telegraph: 15.11.06
High Court approves £750,000 to prisoners forced off drugs
Former inmates who were forced to stop taking drugs in prison by going "cold turkey", defended their right to a cash payment from the Government last night.
Some 180 prisoners and former inmates, who were denied drugs treatment inside jails, are to receive the payments after a Home Office decision to settle out of court to minimise the cost to the taxpayer after six claimants who launched a test case were told they could sue.
advertisementMark Phillips and Peter Groves, both reformed addicts, said they were expecting £3,800 each for going through "hell" in prison.
Mr Phillips, an air conditioning fitter from Chatham, Kent, said he was given nothing for his drug addiction for three months after which he collapsed at Elmley Prison on the Isle of Sheppey. Only then was he given sleeping tablets and for 10 days, a drug called subutex.
"Those of us who have done this lawsuit are not money-grasping," Mr Phillips, 38, told the Sun. "We are deserving cases. I have received a letter saying I should get my money in 28 days. When I was sent to prison I was on a methadone prescription. Once inside I was given nothing at all.
"I went through two or three months of hell. I could not sleep and I was given no anti-depressants. I collapsed in front of prison officers, but no one seemed to care."
Mr Groves, 45, from Telford, Shropshire, said the hand-out was "derisory" considering inmates' suffering.
"We should have got up to £10,000," he said. "The whole basis was that what they did was tantamount to assault.
"I should have been on a two-week programme to get me off heroin but it suddenly stopped after two days. The Government has to realise that prisoners have the same rights as people outside."
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the Home Office may be setting a "disastrous" precedent by settling out of court.