Centre for Mental Health

Sainsbury Centre welcomes inspectors' report on Imprisonment for Public Protection and calls for better mental health care

15 October 2008

"People sentenced to imprisonment for public protection (IPP) must have better mental health care and more support to leave prison safely at the end of their tariff," Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health chief executive Angela Greatley said today.

Responding to the report of HM Inspectors of Prisons and Probation, The indeterminate sentence for public protection, Angela Greatley said: "Today's report shows unequivocally that we need to make urgent improvements in prisons and in the community to give better support to prisoners on IPP now and in the future.

"Our own research has found that more than half of IPP prisoners have a serious mental illness yet only 10 per cent are in touch with prison mental health services. We also found that IPP prisoners with mental health problems were unable to get onto the courses they need to complete to be considered for release at the end of their sentence.

"We need to ensure that no IPP prisoner is disadvantaged because of mental ill health. We must provide proper mental health care to people sentenced to IPP. They should get fair access to rehabilitation programmes. And the NHS and probation services need to work together to support the current 4,600 IPP prisoners when they are released on licence.

"We welcome legislative changes to ensure IPP is only used for people who have committed the most serious offences. We also call for the courts to ensure that dangerous offenders with severe mental illnesses are sentenced to hospital, not to prison on IPP."