Mental Disorder & Offending         

Crime and Mental Disorder

The impact of mental disorder on crime is highly significant - all the information about persistent offending and the 'prison revolving door' have indicated that for well over a decade. 'Mentally Disordered Offenders' have become recognised as a definite group within criminal justice but the links between crime and disorder reduction and tackling mental disorder although certain are complex and difficult to access. So, when dealing with hundreds or thousands of crime per year, it may seem to a police service or community safety partnership a supreme luxury to be concerned with an individual's psychopathy. 

There are large numbers of people who can be defined 'most at risk of offending and reoffending' who have a mental health problem for whom forensic psychiatric and other mental health service intervention is a random occurrence. These include young  and adult offenders in prison and significant numbers supervised on various community based orders; whose offence determines their sentence rather than their mental health needs.

Prisons - As Alternatives to Psychiatric Hospitals

UK Office of National Statistics, in its comprehensive research of prisoners in England and Wales, found that nine out of ten prisoners showed evidence of one of the five disorders considered in their survey (personality disorder, psychosis, neurosis, alcohol misuse and drug dependence) and eight out of ten had two or more disorders. There can be little doubt that the quality of care for mentally disordered prisoners does not compare with the standards achievable 'on the outside' but there seems little willingness either by government services or Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships to challenge the use of prisons as psychiatric dumping grounds.

CDRPs, Effective Crime Reduction and Mental Disorder

Key to effective crime reduction is tackling the causes of crime - it is not just the usual range of social causes (poverty, education unemployment) but also those which prompt criminal behaviour; drug abuse, alcohol abuse and mental disorder. From the point of view of 'successful crime management', a  failure by crime and disorder partnerships to ensure the provision of effective psychiatric and rehabilitative services - both in the controlled environment of prisons and in the community - ignores a critical area of crime prevention and reduction.