A young woman was imprisoned on suspicion of serious crimes – Now the mother fears for her daughter’s life – 2024-08-11 18:54:07

At the time of the incident, the 22-year-old woman was imprisoned at the end of 2023, and she has been a remand prisoner since then. The woman’s health has collapsed after a long period of isolation.

His mother and assistants fear that he may even perish.

Iltalehti has seen the woman’s patient documents and received permission to publish the health information that appears in them. Iltalehti does not reveal the identity of the woman, her family or the defense attorney due to the sensitivity of the matter.

According to the patient documents, the woman imprisoned on suspicion of a serious drug crime has been isolated from the beginning. It practically means that he is alone in his cell for 23 hours a day and also goes outside alone for an hour every day in the prison yard. The woman’s contact with loved ones is limited. Contact with loved ones may only be restricted for particularly compelling reasons.

The woman’s relatives are extremely worried and wonder why the woman is not transferred to a place with the resources for proper care.

“Only bone and skin”

According to the woman’s mother, Spring Time’s relatives did not see the woman for two and a half months.

– We were told that our daughter is fine. I only got to see her in July and I was shocked, the woman’s mother tells Iltalehte.

– My daughter was just bones and skin. She had an eating disorder. My daughter is 170 centimeters tall and weighs only 43.5 kilograms. He has promised to sign some kind of confession just to get out of isolation. By this I mean a recognition that is not true.

Eating disorders are serious mental health disorders that can lead to life-threatening complications at worst.

The mother understands that crimes must be investigated and people must answer for their actions. He calls for the necessary treatment and believes that the criminal investigation could continue even if the suspect is in the hospital.

– I’m afraid that at worst his heart will stop. The isolation has caused a lot of mental pressure, and continuing the isolation will make the situation worse all the time.

Camera cell for treatment

According to the documents, the woman was transferred to Hämeenlinna prison at the beginning of January, when she was healthy according to a health check.

A remand prisoner means a person who is just suspected of a crime. In Finland, pretrial detention is decided by the court. The prison and the prison health service organize the isolation of the remand prisoner, if the court has so ordered.

In February, the woman began to experience anxiety and sleep problems related to the isolation. In April, the guards also expressed their concern about the woman’s situation. The woman said she heard voices and had lost a lot of weight, although she was already very slim.

The woman suffered from not being able to talk to anyone and felt that she needed conversational help. However, there were six-week queues for the psychologist promised by prison health care. The woman also had panic attacks, and the doctor concluded that the symptoms were caused by the cell conditions, i.e. round-the-clock isolation.

The department’s guards found the woman slumped on the floor of her cell several times, and she was literally begging for help to cope mentally. Invoking the monitoring of the woman’s health, she was placed in an isolation cell with camera surveillance, which made it possible to monitor her well-being. The conditions in the cell were even worse than in the woman’s own cell, and her health deteriorated even more.

For example, there is no television or radio in solitary confinement. After being put in solitary confinement, the woman began to fear that she would be transferred there again, and no longer dared to bring up her situation as forcefully.

He was afraid he was going to die

In the summer, the prison staff noticed that the already slim woman was visibly losing weight. He had weighed only 53 kilos when he went to prison, and in June his weight was only 48 kilos.

The prison polyclinic recorded that the weight should no longer be lost. However, the weight has dropped even more and according to the latest information, the 170-centimeter-tall woman weighs only 43.5 kilograms.

The woman’s concern about her own health grew all the time, and she began to suspect that the weight loss might be caused by something other than an eating disorder. There was not much fat left on the woman’s body, and she was afraid she was going to die. It appears from the prison health care records that in mid-July the woman’s condition was already so weak that she was not allowed to walk the stairs.

In July, the woman was sent to Kanta-Häme Central Hospital for evaluation. The doctor at the central hospital would have liked to send the woman to the prison hospital in Hämeenlinna, but it was closed until July. The doctor instructed that the woman should be evaluated by an internist, and a dietitian consultation and discussion support should be arranged for her.

The woman was returned to prison and the next day her situation was assessed via a remote connection from the psychiatric prison hospital in Turku.

The woman said that she had previously had an eating disorder, for which she felt she could get help by talking. He wished he could just talk to someone. The woman was told that there were not enough resources for her to be treated on a conversation basis.

According to the records, the form of treatment in the psychiatric prison hospital in Turku is always medical treatment, which would have been implemented in the case of the woman in such a way that she would have been placed again in isolation in a cell. According to the doctor’s opinion, isolation was the only way to secure and control the woman’s eating in the psychiatric prison hospital in Turku.

The woman refused this treatment because she was afraid of isolation and did not want medical treatment. Although a person suffering from an eating disorder is not necessarily able to eat, even if they want to, the doctor recorded that not eating was a voluntary decision of the woman, which she made knowing the consequences of her actions.

At the end of the conversation, the woman was again isolated in the camera cell of Hämeenlinna prison, where the purpose was to monitor whether the woman vomited. The procedure was completely unnecessary, because the cell camera’s image quality and angle of view were such that you couldn’t see if the woman was vomiting or if she had thrown food away.

The woman herself said that the guards had sat next to her during meals.

Recommendations by the doctor of Kanta-Häme Central Hospital, which he gave on 11.7. still not implemented.

We ran out of resources

According to information from Iltalehti, the restrictions on the woman’s contact have been loosened somewhat in May, and it would be possible for her to be in more social situations with other prisoners.

However, Hämeenlinna prison is full and therefore the woman is still alone in her cell for 23 hours a day and only meets other prisoners for an hour outside. The department where the woman would belong is more open, but there is no room. Thus, contrary to the court decision, the woman is still in almost complete isolation.

The woman’s condition is deteriorating even more and the family has tried to get her help from outside the prison. According to the law, a remand prisoner has the right, with the permission of the prison health care doctor, to receive medication, research and other health care in prison at his own expense, unless this poses a danger to the purpose of the remand prisoner. However, the implementation of external treatment is difficult, because the prison or the police would have to organize the transport of the prisoner to the doctor and the prison doctor would have to approve the treatment in question.

– No information is given about anything, from whom permission could be asked and how, the mother says.

The family made an appointment for the woman with a specialist in internal medicine, as the doctor at the central hospital had instructed.

– My daughter was not taken out of prison for the scheduled time, says the mother.

Contact the police

The mother has also been in contact with the head of the investigation into the suspected crime against the woman and asked for help to get her daughter treated. The law offers different ways to monitor a prisoner, and the prisoner could, for example, be transferred to a hospital under electronic monitoring.

The mother has expressed her concern about her daughter’s situation to the director of the investigation, and the director of the investigation has said that he is aware of how serious the situation is. The mother says that according to the director of the investigation, the police can’t do anything about the situation and that the only one who can do something is the prison.

Iltalehti was also in contact with the director of the investigation. He did not comment on the matter for investigative reasons. After contacting the police, the mother was informed that at the moment no more meetings with her daughter would be arranged for them. A lack of resources was reported as the reason.

Iltalehti was also in contact with the polyclinic of Hämeenlinna prison. Before the reporter could tell what it was about, the nurse slammed the phone into his ear. The same was repeated in the new call attempt. The mother said she received the same treatment.

“Impossible to transport prisoners”

Responsible senior physician Hanna Hemminki-Salin says that the prison health service organizes the prisoner’s treatment according to the law. In Hemminki-Salin’s view, access to health care organized outside the prison is still common.

– We repeatedly have situations where the prisoner has visited external health care at his own expense. Using health care outside of consent is done by the attending physician. The prison is responsible for transportation to treatment.

The final decision on whether a prisoner is granted an exit permit for medical treatment outside the prison is made by the prison unit manager.

– We give consent, but we cannot decide whether the prisoner can leave the prison for treatment, Hemminki-Salin says.

Unit manager of Hämeenlinna prison Marko Karevaara are on different lines when it comes to external health care acquired by the prisoner at his own expense.

– I don’t know of any such case. It is absolutely impossible to transport prisoners for such purposes.

According to Karevaara’s view, prison health care works well and prisoners’ health issues are responded to quickly.

– We have nursing staff in the prison every day.

Karevaara tells about the placement of prisoners on a general level.

– We try to house remand prisoners separately from other prisoners, and if the remand prisoner has contact restrictions in effect for investigative reasons, we have to house them alone. No one is kept in more closed conditions than what the need requires.

Karevaara admits that when the prison is full, it is not necessarily possible to stop the isolation immediately, even if there are no more investigative reasons for it.