Centre for Mental Health

Police stations being overused as places of safety for people with mental health problems, say charities

10 September 2008

People in a mental health crisis should not be taken to police stations while they wait for an assessment under the Mental Health Act, a group of charities has said today.

Responding to a report from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), members of the Mental Health and Criminal Justice Third Sector Forum voiced their concerns that police stations are still widely being used as 'places of safety' for people who appear to need emergency mental health care.

The IPCC report, Police Custody as a Place of Safety under the Mental Health Act 1983, found wide variations in how often police stations are used to detain people in a mental health crisis. It found that the availability of alternative places of safety was vital to reduce the use of police stations and that there were often long delays in assessing people who were detained.

Third Sector Forum members Nacro, Howard League, Mind, Prison Reform Trust, Rethink, Revolving Doors Agency and Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health today called on the NHS to ensure that alternative places of safety were available across England and Wales. Agreements should be in place between the police and health and social services to get people in need of care to a genuine place of safety.

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of Nacro, the crime reduction charity, said: "Despite clear guidelines in the code of practice, police stations are being used as a place of safety for detainees twice as often as hospitals. Very few NHS Trusts, police forces and ambulance services have agreed working arrangements to provide an appropriate and safe environment for people detained by the police under the Mental Health Act. A pan-London protocol already exists to ensure each borough has a designated place of safety. This must now be rolled out across all police forces to ensure appropriate care for the most vulnerable people."

Rethink chief executive Paul Jenkins said: "Police officers are not trained to provide psychiatric care; police stations are not designed to give sanctuary to someone who is experiencing a psychotic episode which can be a deeply distressing and traumatic event. Taking someone in mental distress to a police station rather than a mental health facility is anachronistic and shouldn't belong to the twenty-first century. The Government has said that mental health is a top priority; it's about time we saw a bit of investment and creativity in providing real places of safety for people with mental health conditions when they are needed. Let’s not forget that 1 in 4 of us will have some kind of mental distress during our lifetimes, so, statistically every family in the UK will be touched by mental illness; this isn’t a marginal issue and must stop being treated like one."

Sainsbury Centre chief executive Angela Greatley said: "A police station is a far cry from a 'place of safety' for a person in need of urgent care for their mental health. They can be crowded and chaotic places that can make people with mental health problems feel criminalised. Yet many police forces say they have no alternative to using police stations because there are no suitable hospital facilities. Hospital-based assessment suites must be provided in all areas with sufficient staff to prevent people being taken to police stations unnecessarily."

A 'Place of Safety' is used under Section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act for police to convey a person who appears to be in need of an urgent mental health assessment.