HUNDREDS of prisoners in Scottish jails may have suffered severe brain injuries, leaving them unable to benefit from rehabilitation programmes and more liable to reoffend.

Those affected include dozens of women prisoners who have been victims of domestic violence. Others have neurological illnesses or brain injuries related to gang violence, or events in their criminal past, or childhood, which have often gone untreated,

MSPs investigating healthcare in Scottish jails have been warned by experts that attempts to rehabilitate prisoners are likely to fail, unless more screening and treatment is offered for such conditions.

The British Psychological Society says approximately 60 per cent of inmates of adult prisoners and young offenders institutions will have suffered a head injury at some point in their life, with 45 per cent having had an injury so severe it left them unconscious. This is about three to four times the level found in the general population.

Meanwhile seven to 16 per cent have suffered a severe head injury – potentially hundreds of the current Scottish prison population of 7,742.

The Health and Sport Committee at Holyrood is currently investigating healthcare in prisons. In a submission to this inquiry, the BPS calls attention to a report by the Glasgow-based National Prisoner Healthcare Network last June which said anti-social behaviour could often be caused by brain injury but not be obviously attributable to symptoms. The BPS has called on the Scottish Government to implement the report’s recommendations, which called for better screening and much better provision of appropriate healthcare in prisons.

Tom McMillan, professor of clinical neuropsychology at Glasgow University, who chairs the network, said