-Caveat Lector-
This is the sort of important story I feature daily at
http://leviathan.weblogs.com
>From The Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-54527,00.html
Mentally ill may be detained in 'super-hospital'
BY RICHARD FORD AND JILL SHERMAN
THOUSANDS of people with severe personality disorders could be detained in a single,
campus-style, hospital under a reform of mental health laws in England and Wales
announced yesterday.
Dangerous offenders would be housed in 50-bed units within a secure perimeter fence
and serviced from a central administration area. The proposal is being considered as a
cheaper alternative to building separate small secure units which would be highly
expensive and provoke nimbyism.
Building a single huge hospital would also avoid the problem of multiple applications
for planning permission for units which could house convicted paedophiles. The Home
Office plan is a result of proposals for the biggest overhaul of mental health laws
for more than 40 years. The reforms will give doctors powers to lock up people even if
they have not committed a crime and to detain prisoners who remain dangerous even
after serving their sentence.
The White Paper, Reforming the Mental Health Act, published yesterday, will allow
individuals with severe personality disorders to be detained indefinitely if experts
believe they are a danger to the public. Psychiatric patients in the community will
undergo compulsory treatment. If they refuse, they will be returned to hospital. At
present a person can only be forced to take treatment if they are sectioned. Victims
of violent crime committed by mentally ill people will be told when their attacker is
to be released.
The changes are intended to close legal loopholes and meet public concern at the
failings of care in the community. They have been drawn up in the wake of a series of
murders by mentally ill people living in the community, such as that of Jonathan Zito
who was killed by Christopher Clunes, a schizophrenic, in 1992, and the case of
Michael Stone, convicted of murdering Lin Russell and her daughter Megan in Kent in
1996. He suffered from a severe personality disorder but, despite it having been
diagnosed for several years, he could not be looked after in a secure mental unit
because the disorder is deemed untreatable.
The overhaul, which is unlikely to come into effect for at least two years, removes
the criteria of “treatability”.
Many charities welcomed the plans outlined by Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary, but
others said that the sweeping new powers would prompt a return to Victorian-style
asylums, with innocent people locked up.
More than 2,000 people in the UK are believed to have a dangerous personality
disorder. An estimated 1,400 are in jails, 400 in hospitals and up to 600 are in the
community.
Graeme Sandell of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders
said the powers were an “excessive reaction to a genuine and legitimate public
concern.” But Cliff Prior of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship said that the
proposals were an early Christmas present for everyone who believed it was time to end
the Cinderella status of mental health.
“But it is a Christmas present that carries a demand for payment. There can be no
buy-now, pay-later period.”
Liberty, the civil rights group, expressed serious concern at plans to detain people
with a mental disorder. Mary Cunneen of Liberty said: “This means that an individual
with any form of mental disorder can be detained against their will, even if they
cannot be effectively treated and have not done anything wrong, on the basis that they
pose a risk to others.”
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