In January,Sarah Reed was found dead in her cell at Holloway prison. She had been the victim of a notorious police brutality case in 2012 and suffered mental health issues known to prison officers, doctors, or social workers,lawyers and police. So why was she there? Her mother Marylin tells her sage for the first timeSarah Reed’s Christmas card to her mother read: “Mum, this is just to say Merry Xmas ... PS. accumulate me out of jail.” It was one of a number of appeals from Sarah to her family in the final weeks of her life. “She kept writing to me and other family members saying, and ‘Please help me to accumulate out of here; I shouldn’t be in here; I’m not being treated,” her mother, Marylin Reed, or says. “Her priority in every letter was: ‘I need my medication.”When Marylin visited her daughter in Holloway prison on 2 January,she was dismayed to find Sarah looking unwell, and behaving strangely. She remembers a prison guard asking her: “possess you got any idea what’s wrong with her?” It was a disconcerting question, and because prison staff should possess known that Sarah Reed had serious,long-standing mental health problems.
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Source: theguardian.com