FG calls for mental health court system for ill prisoners

MENTALLY ill offenders should be offered the option of a treatment programme instead of prison, Fine Gael TD Dan Neville said yesterday.

Mr Neville, who is president of the Irish Association of Suicidology, said the recent tragic death of an inmate in Mountjoy Prison underlined the need to have better strategies to deal with prisoners who suffer from mental illness.

“Mentally ill offenders should be afforded the option of a treatment programme instead of prison and be obliged to commit to the programme for an extended period or face imprisonment,” he said.

Mr Neville referred to a recent report showing 60% of female and 35% of male prisoners have suffered from mental illness.

“This report again highlights the scandalous way the psychiatric services are under-resourced and how people who need medical intervention are ending up in prison,” he said.

In most cases the prisoners were convicted for petty crime and were not a danger to society.

“We must address this issue, for the sake of the ill prisoner and, in certain circumstances, for the protection of other prisoners,” he said.

Mr Neville pointed out that of the prisoners, 40% of women and 25% of men had attempted suicide or committed self harm. These people were not receiving the urgent treatment they needed, he stressed.

“In excess of 600 prisoners who are in danger of taking their own lives each year end up in padded cells,” he said.

The TD, who is Fine Gael’s deputy health spokesperson, conveyed an account from an eye-witness of life in a padded cell.

The account referred to a prisoner, a man in his 40s, lying in his underpants in a foetal position on the floor with a pot beside him, in a cell the size of an outsized refrigerator.

Mr Neville said the Government had failed disgracefully in developing the psychiatric service and its resources have been reduced from 11% of the health budget in 1997 to 7% this year.

“What chance is there for the prison population, the most marginalised group in society, of receiving any consideration with regard to their needs for mental illness treatment,” he asked.

Mr Neville advocated a mental health court system, with the option to impose a carefully monitored individual plan of mental health treatment for low-risk mentally ill prisoners, instead of a prison sentence.

But, he said, the new court system must be part of a planned and coordinated monitoring and service programme, that engaged the mental health services.

“Such an approach would involve the court services, the Department of Justice and Social and family Affairs, the Probation and welfare services and the Health Service Executive, all functioning in partnership.”