Mentally ill 'dumped' in prison

Wednesday, 4 February 2009 12:03 AM

By politics.co.uk staff

Tens of thousands of people suffering from mental illnesses are being routinely "dumped" in and out of the prison system, it has been claimed.

A report out today said that many people who should have been passed into mental health or social care from the police were instead entering prisons ill-equipped to meet their needs.

Interviews with the independent monitoring boards of 57 prisons saw one third frequently reporting prisoners too ill for custody, while just one in six said mental health provision was good or adequate.

Prisoners with dementia or learning difficulties were especially poorly served, the watchdogs said.

"An 80-year-old confused man [in this prison] is unable to look after himself," the head of one board revealed. "We do not yet know whether he was known to social services but it seems likely. He has a five-year sentence for indecent exposure which is not surprising since he continually takes his clothes off."

Another board said: "A young female who... had a mental age of a young adolescent, because of each prison wishing a respite from her activity, was sent to [this prison], where she was retained in the segregation unit for over 28 weeks."

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust - which compiled today's report - said "searing questions" had been asked about the wisdom of locking up "our most ill people in our most bleak institutions".

"Why waste time and public money building bigger and bigger prisons when it is clear that our jails are full of people in urgent need of proper mental health and social care?" she asked.

Dr Peter Selby, president of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards, said mental illness and prisons was a 'distressing mismatch'.

"Would anybody prescribe for a mentally ill person the kind of environment that a prison needs to be, let alone the kind of environment that actually exists in our oldest and most unsuitable prisons? Yet this mismatch is what tens of thousands of prisoners experience."

The Prison Reform Trust is calling for learning disability specialists to be employed in all prisons, while it wants prison resettlement units and probation officers to alert local authorities over the needs of vulnerable prisoners.

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