Management of the Mentally Abnormal Offender

Abstract

a restriction of admissions and an increasing difficulty in discharging patients. The mental hospitals, which traditionally have accepted mentally disordered offenders, have been reduced in size and have also been influenced by contemporary liberal attitudes (Lancet 1976). The newer psychiatric units have selected patients with all the social, behavioural and diagnostic connotations of a 'good prognosis' (Little 1974). One judge has warned that the courts will turn again from psychiatry unless they are more favourably treated (Ormrod 1975), and the 'Annual Report of the work of the Prison Department' habitually belabours NHS psychiatry for abdicating its responsibility to care for mentally abnormal offenders. The work of Faulk & Trafford (1975) illustrates one aspect of this process; they identified four covert reasons for a custodial remand in which prison is used as a bail hostel for the homeless, a secure bail hostel for those who have broken bail, an acute alcoholic admission unit and