MP Calls for Better Support for Mental Health Care of Prisoners

12.00.00am GMT Wed 17th Mar 2004

Annette Brooke MP, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for children, has secured a Westminster Hall debate on Wednesday 17 March 2004 on the issue of mental health of prisoners.

As the prison population recently exceeded 75,000 for the first time, and is rapidly reaching operational capacity, this debate comes at a particularly important time.

Annette Brooke MP will say:

"Of the men and women locked up in our jails the vast majority of them will have mental health problems. Research by the Office for National Statistics found that seven out of ten prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders; in many cases this includes substance misuse problems.

"This means, as I speak, there will be more than fifty thousand people in prison who are mentally ill, many of them acutely mentally ill.

"As the prison population increases and prison overcrowding increases, the work done in prison to educate, rehabilitate or detox prisoners effectively is seriously undermined."

We are already seeing the consequences of cramming mentally ill people into overcrowded jails. Incidents of self-harm among prisoners have increased five fold since 1998. Last year there were 17,300 incidents recorded. Among female prisoners the level of self-harm is particularly alarming. A far higher proportion of women injure themselves repeatedly. Many of them will have suffered domestic violence and sexual abuse.

The head of the new National Offender Management Service, Martin Narey, has said that at any one time there are some 5,000 prisoners who should be immediately transferred to secure psychiatric settings.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that prison is the right kind of environment for such people.