Cautionary Tale 3

From time to time it's not unheard of for the workload to increase to such an extent that help has to be summoned from neighbouring offices. It was just such a situation a few years ago that found me visiting a young black guy on remand in order to prepare a PSR for Crown Court. Living as he did in the big multi-cultural city it gave me the rare opportunity of getting involved with someone from a very different culture and background to my usual overwhelmingly white clientele. As such I recall vividly being somewhat more tense than usual when approaching the prison gates, I suppose just because of all the accumulated race awareness training that up till that point had been mostly of academic interest only.

The guy was in his early twenties, physically large and fit looking with a broad smile. He was facing serious charges of possession with intent to supply heroin for the third time and as such was looking at an extended sentence of up to seven years. The interview proved to be one of the most difficult I have ever encountered. No matter how I seemed to approach the questioning I didn't seem to get any answers that made a great deal of sense. It was difficult to hear him despite us being in a semi-enclosed glass booth, but amid the loud din of family visits taking place in the adjacent visits area. He seemed to be constantly distracted and alternately 'laid back.' I remember concluding the interview and driving home thinking it had been a disaster and that the cultural challenges being posed by this case were simply too much for me too deal with. I was quite depressed by this and mulled it over for most of the evening and indeed till I got back to the office in the morning.

A forensic examination of the file and a telephone call to another officer who had previously supervised the young man elucidated the astonishing statement 'well you know he's got a learning disability don't you?' Suddenly all became much clearer. Here was a young guy who was attempting to survive in a very big bad world by trying to hide his disability and just appearing to be more cool and laid back than most. He probably hadn't understood anything I had been discussing with him and I'd been so tense and thick that I hadn't spotted his disability.

A further reading of the file also made clear the nature of his offending. He was being regularly and cynically used by the local drug barons who knew all too well the nature of his disability and simply manipulated him into standing on the street corner to hand out bags of powder to anyone who approached with ten pounds.

Clearly this was not going to be a simple PSR after all. To cut a very long story short, I managed to convince the Court of the need for a full psychological assessment that concluded that this guy's disability effectively meant that he could be persuaded to do anything and he did not have the intellectual capacity to understand the possible consequences. It was one of the saddest reports I've ever read as it didn't take a lot of imagination to see what kind of future lay ahead for this guy, and indeed what kind of a life he had experienced to date being the 'patsy' to all and sundry in return for what he felt was friendship. 

It was immensely satisfying that on the day of eventual sentence the judge agreed to take verbal evidence from myself and a worker from a learning disability advocacy project. He not only resisted the prosecution application for an extended custodial sentence but instead imposed the maximum period of probation supervision of three years and endorsed a condition of residence at a probation hostel. All a very satisfying end to a challenging case I felt, but of course only the beginning of some very hard work for the officer who eventually got to supervise the order.

I'd really love to say that this story had a happy ending, but it doesn't. A sneaky look at CRAMS some time later showed that the guy had been excluded from the hostel for possession of cannabis, had returned to his old haunts and is currently serving that seven years we so successfully managed to avoid him getting. Clearly there's much to learn from this, not least how heartless and callous some criminally-inclined people are and what a devastating handicap a learning disability can be. It also begs the question as to how somebody can reach the age of 23, have a major learning disability and there be no definitive assessment and diagnosis until a probation officer requests one.