A-Z of mental health
Information and advice on a huge range of mental health topics
Spending Review, police and mental health
Posted Friday 22 October 2010
Wednesday’s Spending Review announcement was a blow for Mind’s Another assault campaign to achieve equal access to justice for victims and witnesses with experience of mental distress. Deep cuts to the policing budget mean fewer frontline officers, little or no money for training, and a drive to “protect key priorities” – which, as history shows, is hardly likely to include so-called “diversity” issues like mental health.
Before Mind launched Another assault in 2007, there was barely any awareness in Government or the criminal justice system of the shocking rate of victimisation people with mental distress endure, and the considerable barriers they face to seeing their perpetrators brought to justice. In relation to mental health and criminal justice, the focus has traditionally been on offenders – wrongly, in my view. It’s true that the majority of prisoners have a mental health problem, but people with mental distress are in fact more likely to come into contact with the police as a victim of crime than an offender.
Through our campaigning we managed to win the argument that focusing on offenders alone is not enough. At the 7th annual Victims and Witnesses conference on Wednesday, the message was clear: to tackle crime, people who are victims, who have traditionally been marginalised by the very system set up to protect them, must be given equal access to justice. And since 2007 our campaign has seen some real successes, not least the launch in May this year of new guidance and training for frontline police officers on mental health. This is a huge step forward and, supported by local partnership working between police and voluntary groups, as showcased in our good practice guide, could have ushered in huge improvements in practice at the coalface of community policing.
Yet George Osborne’s announcement yesterday that government funding for the police will reduce by 20% over the next four years puts these fledgling initiatives at risk. Such a deep cut will undoubtedly result in fewer frontline officers on the beat. It is highly likely specialist roles like Mental Health Liaison Officers and Disability Hate Crime Leads will be scrapped. These roles have been crucial in many areas to drive forward improvements in practice, both at regional and very local levels, such as the Mental Health Liaison Officer in Hackney who recently won an award for his innovative work. Without this local leadership and commitment from Mental Health Liaison Officers, such work is likely to fall by the wayside.
On top of this, squeezed police budgets will mean less investment in training overall, but particularly on issues like mental health, which are already seen in many quarters as “nice to do”. Yet mental health awareness training is essential, in the moral sense of improving access to justice, and from a hard-headed business case perspective. Given the high numbers of people with mental distress that will come through the doors of the police station – most likely as a victim but as offenders too – how can the police be expected to do their job efficiently and effectively if they lack the confidence and skills to respond to people with mental health needs? It is a false economy to see “efficiency savings” purely as cutting back office functions like training, as these will cost police efficiency in the end.
The Government may point to its commitment to “invest in mental health liaison services at police stations and courts to intervene at an early stage, diverting mentally ill offenders away from the justice system and into treatment” as evidence they are not sidelining the importance of mental health to policing. This move is clearly welcome, but it does not address the problems faced by victims and witnesses of crimes – and it falls into that old trap of assuming mental health and criminal justice is all about offending.
It is short-sighted to make such deep cuts in policing, as the more people are marginalised from the justice system, fewer crimes will be reported, and offending rates will go up – not to mention the personal impact of crimes on people’s lives, with knock-on effects for other public services. These effects will all cost the state more overall, not less.
But the spending decisions are made now – so Mind will make the case to Government and national police bodies that mental health must be seen as a “key priority” for the police in these straightened times. We will push for Mental Health Liaison Officers to be protected and the new training and guidance to be rolled out as planned. We will also play our part in sharing best practice – and delivering innovative solutions through our local Minds – to try and mitigate the potentially devastating impact of the policing cuts to equal access to justice for people with mental distress.
Amy Whitelock, Policy and Campaigns Officer
7 Comments
-
I hope the police are able to deal with the many thousands of mentally ill people who will be left on the streets because of these cuts,
No large scale mental hospitals left, and as for care in the community , what care in the community ?, after the cuts to the jobs for those we rely on the most, what will be left for us ?????? ,
I have also head that the money that local councils’ will be giving for social care will not go to those who need it as most councils have said that the money will be spread out to support other departments.
And as for the police been informed on mental health what a joke, I had few issues two years back with yobs where I live and was told by the police after telling them I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia " Don't be so paranoid " !!!!!.
-
We have temporarily closed the comments on this post as we will not be able to moderate them over the weekend. Commenting will reopen on Monday morning.
-
Quote from the above blog post:
"In relation to mental health and criminal justice, the focus has traditionally been on offenders – wrongly, in my view. It’s true that the majority of prisoners have a mental health problem..."
That second sentence is hyperlinked to http://www.justice.gov.uk/inspectorates/hmi-prisons/docs/mental_health-rps.pdf
But having scanned through that linked report, I cannot see where it states that?
In fact it states that only 17% of a sample of new prisoners disclosed a psychiatric history.
It states that 47% disclosed problems with drugs and/or alcohol. Is the blogger personally adding these figures together under the term "mental health problem"?
The report states that on a screening questionnaire, 50% scored above a cut-off indicating possible mental health needs.
It later states "The claim that 90% of prisoners have at
least one mental health disorder is commonly quoted, though this is inflated by the inclusion of substance misuse as a mental disorder. In fact the ONS morbidity study found substantial levels of neurotic disorder, personality disorder, drug use and hazardous drinking, and of comorbidity, but relatively lower levels of severe and enduring mental illness, albeit still higher than in the community." -
Hi Allay,
My claim that 'the majority of prisoners have a mental health problem' links to its source at the Centre for Mental Health's website, which states: "approximately 70% of prisoners have either a psychosis, a neurosis, a personality disorder, or a substance misuse problem. Many prisoners have more than one of the above problems." The link is http://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/criminal_justice/issue_overview.aspx
I haven't linked to the report you cite in this blog.
In our police guide we also quote a stat from the Centre for Mental Health, that 90 per cent of prisoners have a mental health problem. This is from their 'Briefing 39: Mental health care and the criminal justice system', which you can download at http://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/pdfs/briefing39_mental_health_care_in_criminal_justice_sys.pdf
The stats I based my sentence on are from the Centre for Mental Health website; I'm afraid I can't comment on the components of that figure, although the Centre for Mental Health does qualify substance misuse problems within the statistic, yes (in their definintion at http://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/criminal_justice/issue_overview.aspx ).
-
Hi Amy,
Thanks for the response. Yes I made a mistake in saying your sentence hyperlinked to that report, when in fact it linked to that paragraph as you say - and it is that paragraph which is hyperlinked to that report.
The thing is, the 70% appears to be a typo, because for the four categories that it lists (which it does not itself summarise as 'mental health problems'), the source it cites gives the figure as 90%.
And, as I mentioned, it does also give a far lower figure in its sample, of only 18%.
As you point out, the Sainsbury Centre also mentions this 90% figure - and it is sourced to this original research: Singleton et al. 1998 http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/Prisoners_PsycMorb.pdf
I think the point of substance here is that it's very ambiguous just to refer to all this as 'mental health problems' without any mention of how broadly that's being defined. The largest percentage is substance misuse, which of course is often categorised separately. The next largest percentage is personality disorder, which is also often categorised separately (and in some cases is actually defined by anti-social conduct such as tends to land you in prison).
And then of course it seems pretty dubious and medical-modelly to assume that being depressed when in prison indicates a mental health problem. I would imagine a perfectly healthy mind would be in a state of depression being in prison - in fact that's the whole bloody point of prisons isn't it!?
-
Hi again Allay,
You make some good points, which in fact chime with the overall point I was trying to make in the blog - that traditionally the focus of Government and criminal justice agencies has been too much on the mental health problems of offenders. That's why Mind has been campaigning since 2007 to shift the focus towards victims and witnesses with experience of mental distress, who experience high rates of crime and very low rates of redress in terms of gaining access to the justice system and seeing the perpetrator punished.
Thanks for your comments!
Amy -
Hi Amy,
I've been reading Mind's document that you linked to - "Achieving justice for victims and witnesses with mental distress" http://www.mind.org.uk/assets/0000/9950/Prosecutors__toolkit.pdf
and I really thought it was excellent.
I found it absolutely staggering that in the 21st century a person could have been denied even the chance to bring charges against his assailant, based on nothing more than a generalisation about people diagnosed with schizophrenia.
And I actually think mental health services need to be given guidelines along these same lines, seriously. So often those working with clients, who should know better, totally fail to work out with them exactly what their individual cognitive or emotional or whatever issues are, and fail to recognise fluidity or to respect individual difference, and fail to appreciate the strengths if proper understanding, supports and adaptations were provided, and put too much stock in whatever they've been told behind the scenes by professionals or relatives.
I've also been reading the other things you mentioned about the progress that's been made with training police and developing local partnerships etc.
And it seems to me it would indeed be a travesty of justice and a false economy if the government were to abandon these initiatives and these specialist roles, which help protect people, and help protect British justice, help people give reliable witness statements, and ultimately to bring offenders to justice.
This government has claimed that it would always protect the vulnerable and disabled despite its debt-cutting aims. This is one area of hard reality where this claim will be shown for what it is one way or another.
And you can't be tough on crime and the causes of crime, without reaching out to and protecting witnesses and using them optimally. So if the government abandons these initiatives, it will also show that its claims of being tough on crime are also hollow.
Commenting is now closed.