Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T10:29:28.804Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The impact of the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1983 on admissions to an interim regional secure unit for mentally handicapped offenders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Sudip Hoare  and
Gregory O'Brien
Sudip Hoare
Affiliation:
Mental Handicap Psychiatry, Little Plumstead Hospital, Norwich
Gregory O'Brien
Affiliation:
University Lecturer in Mental Handicap Psychiatry, Section of Developmental Psychiatry, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The management of mentally handicapped offenders has long been problematic. Three misconceptions of the relationship between mental handicap and criminality have been widely held since the turn of the century, despite there being no conclusive evidence in their support (Jackson, 1983). These are: that mentally handicapped people are more likely than others to commit antisocial acts in general; that they have a particular predisposition to commit serious crime, especially sexual crime (Robertson, 1981); and that they are unlikely to be deterred by normal sanctions. Misunderstanding breeds misapprehension. Sadly, in the past, many mentally handicapped people were admitted to hospital after committing only trivial offences. Moreover, one Special Hospital study (Parker, 1974) found that most “severely subnormal and subnormal” detained patients actually had IQs above the category to which they had been assigned.

Type
Audit in practice
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 15 , Issue 9 , September 1991 , pp. 548 - 550
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1991

References

Jackson, R. (1983) Mental retardation and criminal justice: some issues and problems. British Journal of Mental Subnormality, 29, 7–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayor, J., Bhate, M., Firth, H., Graham, A., Knox, P. & Tyrer, S. (1990) Facilities for mentally impaired patients: three years of experience of a semi-secure unit. Psychiatric Bulletin, 14, 333–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, E. (1974) Survey of Incapacity associated with Mental Handicap at Rampton and Moss Side Special Hospitals. Special Hospitals Research Unit Publication 11, London.Google Scholar
Robertson, G. (1981) The extent and pattern of crime amongst mentally handicapped offenders. Journal of the British Institute of Mental Handicap, 9, 100–103.Google Scholar
Royal College of Psychiatrists (1980) Secure facilities for psychiatric patients - a comprehensive policy. London: Royal College of Psychiatrists.Google Scholar
Turk, J. (1989) Forensic aspects of mental handicap. British Journal of Psychiatry, 155, 591–594.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.