Mentally Disordered Offenders : Managing People Nobody Owns

Managing the Mentally Disordered Offender presses the case for better health care of mentally disturbed law breakers, and the need to divert them from unnecessary imprisonment. Mentally disordered offenders present particular problems in our society, which wants both to sympathise and to punish. How do we get the balance right between sympathy towards their illness and genuine worries about their offending behaviour? What do we do for - and about - people wo have been released from prison yet we suspect continue to pose risks to the safety of others? With specialist contributors from criminology, criminal justice, social work, probation practice and the law, Managing the Mentally Disordered Offender stresses the importance of professional cooperation in community-based services, whilst acknowledgin the psychologically demanding nature of working with mentally disordered people, and ther very real challenges of attempting to contain their wrongdoing without recourse to the repressiveness of imprisonment. Preliminaries......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 Preface......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1 Mental disorder and social order underlying themes in crime management......Page 25 2 Public Inquiries in mental health with particular reference to the Blackwood case at Broadmoor and the patient complaints of Ashworth Hospital......Page 42 3 The police and the mentally disordered in the community......Page 53 4 Diverting mentally disordered offenders from custody......Page 68 5 Recreating mayhem Developing understanding for social work with mentally disordered people......Page 87 6 Multi agency risk management of mentally disordered sex offenders a probation case study......Page 110 7 The Parole Board and the mentally disordered offender......Page 127 8 Control and compassion the uncertain role of Mental Health Review Tribunals in the management of the mentally ill......Page 142 9 Thinking horses, not zebras......Page 156 10 A balance of possibilities some concluding notes on rights risks and the mentally disordered offender......Page 171 Index......Page 184 Mentally disordered offenders present particular problems in our society, which wants both to sympathize and to punish. How do we achieve a balance between sympathy towards their illness and genuine worries about their offending behavior? What do we do for - and about -

people who have been released from prison yet continue to pose risks to the safety of others? Managing the Mentally Disordered Offender presses the case for better health care of mentally disturbed law breakers and the need to spare them unnecessary punishment. With specialist

contributors from criminology, criminal justice, social work, probation practice and the law, the book stresses the importance of professional cooperation in community-based services. At the same time it acknowledges the psychologically demanding nature of working with mentally

disordered people and ther very real challenges of attempting to contain their wrongdoing without recourse to the repressiveness of imprisonment.

Presses the case for better health care of mentally disturbed law breakers, and the need to divert them from unnecessary imprisonment. Stresses the importance of professional cooperation in community based services, whilst acknowledging the psychologically demanding nature of working with mentally disordered people The papers in this anthology discuss the treatment of mentally disordered offenders. Contributors press the need for better health care inside prisons and in the community, and discuss the need to achieve a balance between sympathy towards mentally ill inmates and genuine worries about their offending behavior The subject matter of this book is not, as our contributors make plain, and as the work of Herschel Prins, whose work we look to honour in this Festschrift, amply demonstrates, straightforward.