Centre for Mental Health

Sainsbury Centre welcomes government commitment to community sentences

3 June 2008

Community sentences should offer offenders with mental health problems a viable alternative to imprisonment, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health said today.

Welcoming a government report on the benefits of community sentences, Sainsbury Centre director of prisons and criminal justice Sean Duggan said: "The prison population has now risen above 83,000. As many as nine in ten prisoners suffer from at least one mental health problem, and prison mental health services have only one-third of the funding they need."

"Short prison sentences are long enough for a person to lose their home, their job, their health and their family, but do virtually nothing to help them to reintegrate into society.

"Community-based alternatives to prison for offenders with mental health problems are available. These include diverting people away from criminal justice to community mental health services, or issuing community sentences with a mental health treatment requirement (MHTR).

"Yet court liaison and diversion schemes are unevenly scattered across the country while uptake of the mental health treatment requirement has been very low since its introduction three years ago*.

"We welcome the Government's commitment to increasing the use of community sentences for people with mental health problems, especially for women. It is vital that community-based mental health services are available to support people on community orders who need their help."

* A Sainsbury Centre report in January 2008 showed that only 725 mental health treatment requirements were issued in 2006 with community orders. This means less than one per cent of people on community orders received an MHTR despite research showing that half of offenders serving community orders have a mental health need.