Why are some mentally ill patients treated like criminals?

When Linda Morgan's son Joe Paraskeva was sectioned, he tried to escape from hospital and was given a prison sentence that could see him spend the rest of his life behind bars. His mother has launched a campaign, Justice for Joe, to highlight his case.

Amelia Gentleman
guardian.co.uk

By the time Joe Paraskeva started smashing his fist through the mirrors at his family home, saying he could no longer bear to look at his own face, his mother realised that he was having another serious mental health crisis and needed urgent medical help.

On 4 October last year, Linda Morgan accompanied her 20-year-old son to a secure unit within the adult psychiatric ward of a large London hospital where he was subsequently sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He had already spent seven months in an adolescent mental health unit when he was 17, where he was diagnosed and treated for bipolar affective disorder, but this was the first time he had been inside an adult unit and Morgan recalls that when she said goodbye, her son was very nervous at being left alone.

Two days later, frightened and disturbed, he tried to escape from the wing, attempting (unsuccessfully) to burn a hole in the doors by lighting his aerosol deodorant and firing the flame towards the lock. No one was hurt and only a couple of hundred pounds' worth of damage was caused, Morgan says. Paraskeva pleaded guilty to arson and on 5 April he was given an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP), with a minimum requirement of two years in prison but no maximum limit – which means he could, depending on his behaviour, be detained for life.

His mother cannot understand how a patient sectioned within a mental health ward and apparently seriously ill has been given such a severe punishment. Her son, who had no previous criminal convictions, offered to pay for whatever damage was caused when he pleaded guilty. She is horrified that within two days of voluntarily http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifadmitting himself to hospital on ghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrounds of mental ill health, he washttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif transferred first to a police cell, and then subsequently to prison. Paraskeva is serving his sentence at Chelmsford Young Offenders Institute, and although he has spent some time on the medical wing there, he is currently with other prisoners in the general section of the institution.

"I don't think that Joe should have been sent to prison at all after committing an offence under section in a psychiatric ward. He doesn't need punishment; he needs help," Morgan says. Confused and horrified by the speed with which her son was moved from being a patient to a prisoner, she has launched an online campaign, Justice for Joe.

To read more of this compelling story, click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/01/mentally-ill-treated-like-criminals?INTCMP=SRCH

Reoffending rates higher after short jail terms, study finds

Community penalties and longer prison sentences of two to four years are more effective, Ministry of Justice research shows

Alan Travis, home affairs editor guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 May 2011

Offenders given community penalties have significantly lower reoffending rates than similar offenders who have served short prison sentences, according to Ministry of Justice research.

The first authoritative analysis of the effectiveness of different sentences shows that longer prison sentences of two to four years – which allow time to tackle offending behaviour – are more effective than jail terms of under 12 months, during which inmates are simply warehoused.

The findings will provide strong evidence to underpin legislation due next month from the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, to reform criminal sentencing and introduce a "rehabilitation revolution" to stablise the record prison population in England and Wales.

David Cameron is reported to be preparing a speech on crime next month – similar to his intervention on immigration in April – amid anxieties in Downing Street that Clarke's plans will be portrayed as being soft on crime, despite being financially essential.

Clarke said the MoJ statistics showed reoffending in England and Wales to be unacceptably high and underlined the urgent need for steps to counter it.

"It is a national scandal that nearly half of all offenders reoffend within a year of release," he said. "Sentences must properly punish offenders as well as address the causes of their offending so that they are ready to go straight once their punishment has ended."

Clarke said both prison and non-custodial sentences needed to do much more to address the underlying causes of crime, such as drugs and mental illness.

The MoJ research looked at the reoffending rates of "matched" samples of offenders given a range of sentences between 2005 and 2008. The reoffending rate was defined as those convicted or cautioned for at least one further offence in the 12 months after serving the sentence.

The matched samples were identical in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, type of offence and number of previous convictions so that the effectiveness of each kind of sentence could be compared for the first time.

The results show that those who had been on community sentences, including unpaid work and probation, in 2008 had a reoffending rate of 51%, compared with 59% for those on prison sentences of less than 12 months.

The comparison between short prison sentences and suspended sentence orders is even more stark, with a gap of nearly nine percentage points.

Those sentenced to between two and four years had a lower reoffending rate than those given prison sentences of less than 12 months, with a 4.4 percentage point gap for 2008.

Iain Bell, the MoJ's chief statistician, said the findings were not conclusive on whether the deterrent effect of longer prison sentences was more effective at reducing reoffending.

"Offenders receiving sentences of less than 12 months do not have access to offender management programmes and are not subject to supervision by the probation service on release," he said, adding that the data could not be used to reliably establish the impact of probation supervision and offender management programmes.