NEGLIGENCE at Polmont Young Offenders Institution served as a “death sentence,” driving two people to take their own lives, according to their families’ lawyer.

Aamer Anwar made the remarks as the outcome of a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) was published into the deaths of Kate Allan, 21, and William Brown, 16, at the institution within months of one another in 2018.

Allan, a student at Glasgow University, was found dead on June 4 while serving a 16-month sentence for drink-driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

Brown was placed in Polmont after a children’s secure unit place could not be found.

But despite his admission report noting he had made repeated attempts on his own life in 2017, he died on October 7, just three days after he arrived.

Sheriff SG Collins KC said the FAI had found a “catalogue of individual and collective failures by prison and healthcare staff” to take “reasonable precautions,” which could have avoided the deaths, slamming systematic failures which actively contributed to them.

Responding, a Scottish Prison Service (SPS) spokesperson offered the families “sincere condolences and apologies,” adding they would “carefully consider” Sheriff Collins’s 25 recommendations.

But representing the bereaved families, human rights lawyer Mr Anwar said he expected them to be “ignored” by SPS unless they are made mandatory.

At a press conference this morning, Mr Anwar branded SPS, NHS Forth Valley and the Scottish government as “complicit in the deaths that continue to take place.”

He called for an end to “crown immunity” for prisons, which he branded a “licence to kill.”

“It is clear on the sheriff’s findings that had SPS simply done its job, then Katie Allan and William Lindsay may have been alive today,” he said.

“The failures were systemic. They were catastrophic. They were incompetent.

“Individuals either ignored processes or simply conducted a cover-up.

“Their failure to act was, as described by one prison officer, criminally negligent.

“There was nothing inevitable about William and Katie taking their own lives — it was clear to anybody that cared to look that they were vulnerable and at risk.

“We do not have the death sentence in the UK, but for Katie and William that is exactly what their prison sentence was.”

SNP Justice Secretary Angela Constance said: “The deaths of these two young people should not have happened while they were in the care of the state.”