Poor jail care for mentally ill boosts crime

Published on Wednesday 3 December 2008 21:47

MORE crime is being committed because of serious failings in the treatment of mentally ill prisoners, according to a damning new report published today.

A shortage of services for offenders with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental health conditions is increasing reoffending, says Dr Andrew McLellan, the chief inspector of prisons.

His report, Out of Sight, follows the biggest-ever review of the treatment of prisoners with severe and enduring mental health problems.

It finds that at least 315 prisoners have severe mental health problems – 4.5 per cent of the prison population and four times the level among the general public.

The report recommends that many of these people should be treated in hospital, rather than sent to prison, where they are sometimes placed in solitary confinement because there is nowhere else to put them, making their illness worse.

It also singles out a lack of support for mentally ill prisoners when they are released from prison.

Unveiling the report, Mr McLellan said a shortage of care for prisoners when they are released is adding to reoffending, and he blamed overcrowding for the often poor standard of care inside jails.

"People just become drifters. If people with mental illness are released from prison into insecure accommodation, which they will find difficult to maintain because of their illness, it is much more likely they will become homeless. Homeless people with mental illnesses are absolute classic reoffenders. They have no other hold on life, they have to eat and they may well have to feed addictive behaviour.

"They are also not getting the treatment they need for their illness. The whole thing is just so wretched."

The report praises the efforts of prison staff, but highlights a lack of appropriate cells and services for mentally ill inmates because of overcrowding.

Mr McLellan said he was moved to investigate the issue after encountering a mentally ill prisoner who had committed minor offences in the segregation unit at Edinburgh's Saught-on jail. "He was in a pathetic state," he said. "He was dirty, he was incoherent, he was completely lost and nobody in the jail knew what to do with him."

The report also criticises the courts and other agencies for failing to identify some offenders with certain serious mental illnesses before sending them to prison.

Dr Andrew Fraser, the director of health and care at the Scottish Prison Service, said: "A lot of people with severe mental health problems should not get as far as the prison gate – they should be going to the secure hospital estate."

BACKGROUND

Andrew McLellan's report comes as ministers cut the number of patients at Scotland's state hospital.

More than a quarter of patients at Carstairs have been released in just over a year, as it moves towards meeting a target of reducing beds by 40 per cent, to 140. The hospital houses some of the most dangerous killers in Scotland. Patients deemed unsuitable for the high level of security and treatment are being transferred to other units.