Warning as jail chiefs halt crime clan feuds
Scottish Prison Service says criminals with links to country’s most-feared gangsters are behind attacks
woman as a shield to sneak up behind Lyons and assault him.
In May, notorious hood Robert Daniel, 31, was taken to hospital after being slashed at HMP Barlinnie in Glasgow, where he was serving a two-year sentence for being caught with a £16,000 stash of heroin and cocaine.
Raymond Anderson, a Daniel clan hitman serving life for murder, was attacked in HMP Shotts on Christmas Eve. The 58-year-old has been repeatedly targeted since he was convicted of shooting Michael Lyons in 2006.
There were 112 serious prisoner- onprisoner assaults recorded across the estate in 2019/20.
This has reduced by 17 per cent on the previous year but jail leaders said the majority of attacks occur in larger male prisons where serious violence is often carried out by multiple offenders.
The report said: “It is assessed that a number of the serious assaults are linked to SOCG (serious organised crime gang) nominals taking action against rival groups and in a number of cases individuals are accepting high-value contracts to carry out violence as directed by prominent individuals.”
While minor prisoner- on- prisoner assaults have also dropped to 2892 this year, compared to 2994 the previous year, the SPS said a “large portion” of them had also been linked to crime gangs. We t ol d l a s t ye a r how pr i son authorities were struggling to keep rival members of the Lyons and Daniel crime clans apart after a plan to keep one faction in the same jail failed.
Inmates linked to the Daniel group were being held in isolation in January after being shipped out of the top security facility earmarked for its convicted members.
Thugs with ties to the Glasgow-based gang had been locked up at Edinburgh’s HMP Saughton in an effort by the SPS to keep them separate from Lyons henchmen.
The authority’s repor t revealed serious prisoner-onstaff assaults had also increased slightly, with 12 incidents in the last year.
It said: “With a further increase in the number of SOCG nominals held in custody, the requirement to manage individuals who present an extreme risk of violence has increased.
“There has also been a significant increase in assaults against staff within the prisoner reception area and visits room. It is suspected that these assaults are drug related or as a result of the current feuds between rival SOCGs.
“Individuals perpetrating these assaults know that this behaviour will lead to them being placed within a Separation and Reintegration Unit (SRU) away from the general prisoner population.”
The SPS said it had introduced initiatives to try to reduce the levels of violence and said risks were being “exacerbated” by a sustained increase in population, up more than five per cent in the last year.
It said it was working with justice partners to improve intelligence gathering and was receiving early aler ts f rom
Pol ice Scot l and before high- r isk individuals enter the prison system. A SPS spokeswoman said a Nat ional Strategic Risk And Threat Group had been established to respond to increasing levels of violence.
She said: “Prisons are mirrors of wider society and our prisons hold increasingly complex and challenging populations. We recognise the importance of providing a safe and secure environment for those in custody as well as for the men and women who work in our prisons.
“Given the nature of their job, prison staff can work with dangerous and difficult individuals and, on occasions, assaults on staf f unfortunately do occur.
“However, one assault is one too many and it is our policy that all assaults on staff are reported to the appropriate authorities. SPS provides a range of support measures and interventions to staff who have been assaulted during their duties.
“The numbers of individuals who come from a Serious and Organised Crime background in our communities is rising.
“The rivalries and tensions between these groups manifest themselves in targeted violence and managing this is an ongoing challenge.”
A prisoner was rushed to hospital yesterday in a critical condition after an alleged attack at HMP Glenochil.
The alarm was raised at about 11.30am after the male convict was found with serious injuries at the Clackmannanshire prison.
Sources claim the man was hurt during a “prisoner on prisoner attack”.
The first death, the 100th, the 1000th? Perhaps it was when we began viewing them as just that – numbers, rather than human beings with the same capacity for love, fear and hope as the rest of us.
There is no doubt our governments don’t want these vulnerable citizens to die of Covid-19.
Ministers in Holyrood and Westminster are aware a day of reckoning is coming when they will be judged by the electorate on the quantity of life lost to this horrible virus.
The problem is that in pursuing as low a death toll as possible, they have become blinkered to the unacceptable conditions being endured by more than 35,000 care home residents in Scotland – a very large group of people who have borne the brunt of this terrible virus.
An insipid mindset has crept in where our elderly are allowed to die of any other condition after spending their last days suffering abject loneliness and depression.
They were old and they were going to die anyway and so long as they don’t die of coronavirus, we can chalk that up as a success.
Tomorrow marks 300 days since all those people – treasured wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, grandparents and friends were locked away.
It is for their own protection, we’re told, and yet governments on both sides of the Border let Covid-19 in the back door while they banned relatives from the front.
This paper revealed in April that infected patients were being sent into care homes, below right.
Decisions made by politicians to discharge the elderly from hospital during the first wave almost certainly played a role in the horrific death toll that followed.
Yes, mistakes were made, they said.
Lessons will be learned, they said.
We were in unprecedented times, they said.
Yet, they still make the same mistakes – and new ones too.
Today, we reveal yet more confusion and chaos as the vaccine gets rolled out to our most in need.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has insisted her entire focus is on tackling the pandemic and getting all of our lives back to some kind of normality.
That is exactly where it should be – and not an ugly war developing between the First Minister and her predecessor Alex Salmond.
Frankly, an argument over who said what in a meeting several years aago should, for the mmoment, be put to oone side.
Lives are at risk aagain.
As a nation, we are iin a race against time bbetween the vaccine aand the virus – our llives, our jobs, our mental and physical health, all depend on us winning.
It is also important to accept that the vaccine alone is not going to free us. It is one of a number of solutions that will hopefully allow a return to relative normality in 2021 while accepting that we are going to have to learn to live with Covid-19. Part of that process is inevitably going to be about learning to balance acceptable risk with other basic human needs.
We can no longer lock up our elderly and stand by as we’re told its for their own protection.
Infection control experts, leading nurses, doctors and public health academics are unanimous in warning that closing the doors on care homes is unacceptable because it breaks these bonds of love.
A simple and speedily implemented new law could give nominated family members or friends of care home relatives a legal right to be with them as essential al care givers.
Anne’s Law would give hope to o tens of thousands of families andd it would be the right thing to do.
We are all going to grow old one ne day. It will creep up before we realise it and if we are lucky, the greatest joy in those years will come from moments spent with our most loved.
The Scottish Government has had to get used to making tough decisions and those decisions won’t stop any time soon.
So, First Minister, don’t continue to do the easy thing – do the right thing.