Using police cells to detain people with mental illness to be banned under new reforms

The Prime Minister has announced that police cells will no longer be used to detain people experiencing mental illness. The announcement comes as part of a series of reforms under the government’s new approach to mental health as a result of the overhaul of the Mental Health Act.

In 2017/18, 49,551 people were detained under the Mental Health Act and in 2016/17 the use of police cells and custody suites as a place of safety accounted for 3.9% of detentions. One of the key factors in reforming the policy is racial bias, with black people four times more likely to be detained under the act than white people.

Source: The Independent

Report raises alarm over police detention of vulnerable suspects

A report by the National Appropriate Adult Network (NAAN) has found that more than 100,000 police detentions and voluntary interviews of vulnerable adult suspects who have a mental illness, learning disability, brain injury or are autistic individuals, are carried out each year without the support of an ‘appropriate adult’.

Previous studies have indicated that as many as 39% of adults in police custody have a mental disorder or intellectual disability. Last year police recorded the need for an appropriate adult in only 6% of around 1 million police detentions and voluntary interviews of adults. The report also found that where police had no access to an organised appropriate adult scheme, they were half as likely to record an adult suspect as needing one.

Source: The Guardian

PTSD ‘at crisis levels’ among police officers

Research by Cambridge University and Police Care UK has revealed that in a study of 17,000 95% of officers and 67% of operational police staff have been exposed to traumatic events, of which 20% had reported symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD . It also found that two thirds of those with PTSD were unaware that they were suffering from it.

Other findings from the study are that PTSD rates almost five times higher in the police than in the general population, and that there is sufficient cause for concern that officers are given insufficient time to process traumatic incidents before being sent back out on the next call.

Source: BBC, Police Care UK

Community Cohesion and Hate Crime

The All Party Parliamentary Group  (APPG) on hate crime has published it’s report How do we Build Community Cohesion when Hate Crime is on the Rise?.

Hate crime predominately takes the form of verbal abuse or harassment, although it can vary within strands. LGBT+ victims, for example, tend to experience greater levels of physical assault, whereas individuals with learning difficulties often fall victim to financial or sexual exploitation. Hate crime remains massively under-reported both due to normalisation for its high frequency for victims, and also due to a previous lack of trust between affected communities and the police.

The report found that there was a clear desire to see a more consistent approach towards hate crime from police forces, particularly with regard to awareness training and community outreach.

It was largely agreed that current hate crime legislation is fragmented and creates a ‘hierarchy of hate’, where racism and religious hate crime can carry a greater penalty than LGBT+ and disability-related hate crimes.

Consultation on Homelessness

Views are sought on the effectiveness of existing non-statutory and statutory local accountability and partnership structures; the challenges and opportunities in two-tier authorities; whether the Government should introduce Homelessness Reduction Boards and, if so, how this could be done most effectively; and on how else we might improve local accountability and partnership working.

This consultation seeks views on how the Government could improve local accountability for the delivery of homelessness services. It covers the following areas:

• Existing accountability arrangements
• Homelessness Reduction Boards; and
• Other ways of achieving effective partnership working

This consultation will last for 12 weeks from 21 February 2019.

Source: Gov.uk

Brain injuries in women prisoners are linked to mental illness and reoffending

An article discussing the link between brain injuries and an individuals likelihood to go be prison, be violent, and reoffend has suggested that more research needs to be undertaken and utilised by prisons. The article, focusing on female prisoners, discusses the need for better understanding of brain injuries to help prisoners get support and better rehabilitation to try and reduce rates of reoffending. It also highlights the need for a better understanding of the impact such trauma can have and how it may be worsened in a prison environment which if not handled correctly could lead to high levels of distress and misbehaviour. One of the key points in the article is that much of the research into the link between brain injuries and violence, reoffending and incarceration had been conducted in mens’ prisons giving which did not necessarily reflect brain injuries in women. 

IOPC Learning the Lessons: Mental Health

The latest edition focuses on mental health. Other themes covered in this issue include the importance of recording and sharing information with different agencies, identifying mental vulnerability, dealing with detainees who have autism, and making sure PACE Code C safeguards are complied with.

Source: IOPC

Suicide prevention: cross-government plan

The first cross-government suicide prevention workplan has now been published. It sets out the actions being taken up to 2020 to carry out the suicide prevention strategy for England. These actions will be taken by:

• national and local government
• the NHS
• other stakeholders, including the voluntary sector.

Modernising the Mental Health Act – Final Report from the Independent Review

The Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983 has set out recommendations for government on how the Act and associated practice needs to change. 

The review looked at the rising rates of detention under the Act; the disproportionate number of people from BME groups detained under the act; and the processes that are out of step with a modern health care system. The final report sets out recommendations covering four principles that the review believes should underpin the reformed Act:

1. Choice and autonomy – ensuring service users’ view and choices are respected.
2. Least restriction – ensuring the Act’s powers are used in the least restrictive way.
3. Therapeutic benefit – ensuring patients are supported to get better, so they can be discharged from the Act.
4. People as individuals – ensuring patients are views and treated as rounded individuals.

The recommendations relating to policing sit under principle 4:

• By 2023/24 investment in mental health services, health-based places of safety and ambulances should allow for the removal of police cells as a place of safety in the Act, and ensure that the majority of people detained under police powers should be conveyed to places of safety by ambulance. This is subject to satisfactory and safe alternative health-based places of safety being in place.
• Ambulance services should establish formal standards for responses to section 136 conveyances and all other mental health crisis calls and ambulance commissioners and ambulance trusts should improve the fleet, including commissioning bespoke mental health vehicles.
• The responsibilities of NHS commissioners under section 140 of the Act must be discharged more consistently and more effectively, so that emergency beds are available.
• NHS England should take over the commissioning of health services in police custody.
• Equality issues, particularly police interactions with people from ethnic minority communities under the MHA, should be monitored and addressed. This should be considered under the proposed Organisational Competence Framework where possible.

Source: GOV.UK

Policing and Mental Health – Picking up the Pieces

HMICFRS has published a report regarding the policing and mental health.

• The police are working beyond their duty. Often, as a 24/7 service, police are the only professional available to respond to ‘out of hours’ crises. Feedback and data indicates that in some cases the police are stepping in to fill shortfalls in health services. This includes transporting someone to hospital because an ambulance is not available; waiting with someone in hospital until a mental health place can be found; or checking on someone where there is concern for their safety.
• The amount of work the police do to help people with mental ill-health is out of step with public expectations; 2%  of the surveyed public felt it was the police’s responsibility to respond to mental health-related calls. 70% felt it was the main responsibility of the health services, and 10% felt that the local authority or council were responsible. 
• Strong leadership and governance on mental health was found across most forces, and every force had a chief officer mental health lead.
• Strong partnership links are vital in the policing response to mental ill-health. Mental health (‘street’) triage, was particularly praised.
• The police are good at recognises when an individual is in crisis. This is mainly through a clear, consistent and understood definition of mental ill-health, and a good understanding of risk and applying the THRIVE risk assessment principles. Officers have a good understanding of how to respond to those with mental health problems.

Source: HMICFRS