Jails used to 'fill gaps' in mental health services 

Report is latest in a 'long line' documenting lack of resources in mental health services and the plight of ill prisoners in jails. File picture: Irish Times

Prisons are being used to “fill gaps” in the mental health services and the rights of inmates with severe psychiatric illnesses are being breached by putting them in isolation cells.

That is according to the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT), responding to a report by the Mental Health Commission, entitled Access to Mental Health Services for People in the Criminal Justice System.

The IPRT urged the Government to implement the report's recommendations, pointing out it was the latest in a “long line” of reports documenting lack of resources in mental health services and the plight of ill prisoners in jails.

The MHC report was conducted by Dr Susan Finnerty, inspector of mental health services, with support from Patricia Gilheaney, the inspector of prisons.

Dr Finnerty said the mental health service were under-resourced and the only out-of-hours provision was through emergency departments. 

She cited the lack of formal pre-arrest diversion and an under-resourced and over-worked court diversion service.

Breach of human rights

She said people who were severely mentally ill were being locked in isolation units and other areas of prisons awaiting mental health care in appropriate settings, in particular in the Central Mental Hospital, and said this was a breach of human rights.

IPRT executive director Fíona Ní Chinnéide said: “Ireland is failing people with mental illness and allowing prison to be used to fill gaps in wider mental health services.” 

The practice of locking people with severe mental illness in isolation units in prison while they await appropriate care fundamentally breaches their human rights.” 

Ms Chinnéide said the IPRT was calling for a fundamental shift in how people with mental illness who come in contact with the criminal justice system are treated and that diversion mechanisms should be available at all points.

“The State is failing people made vulnerable through mental illness and disabilities and is allowing the prison system to be used to fill gaps in our health services,” she said.

Ms  Ní Chinnéide said the scale of unmet mental health needs in prisons was “vast” and the responses were completely inadequate.

“People who urgently require hospital care are instead being held in isolation in an environment that exacerbates trauma and distress and entrenches mental health issues,” she said.