Article kindly provided by The Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain.

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Dear Editor 

At the beginning of August 2006 I began to listen to a radio programme entitled Vulnerable Teenagers in Custody.  I had to make myself listen to tragedy after tragedy describing what was happening to the young people locked up in a harsh punitive environment.  They were probably all develpoing mental illness and almost certainly it was this that had caused their unacceptable behaviour.  The segregation punishments meted out were too awful to bear.  The suicide of one inmate was described by his brave mother.  Such suicides are not rare in such bleak and punitive encironments.  One particularly vivid description was of a large metal 'cage' as it was called by the prisoners.  It was evidently a small exercise and punishment cage in which prisoners could do nothing but pace up and down in their isolation.

This radio programme described, in the most soul-destroying way, what was happening in these prisons for young offenders.  It was evidently a typical example of a young offenders punishment centre.  I could scarcely listen, but I was left with the memory of the punishment regimes for those young people.  They are awful beyond belief.  These are young, unstable people being isolated and punished.  They are, of course, in huge need of sympathetic understanding and most probably all of them in need of good compassionate treatment in hospitals where their disturbed behaviours could be understood and often medically treated.  The punishment of those children is shocking beyond belief.  It was admitted, towards the end of the programme, that the offenders were, many of them, mentally ill but those in charge of them were unqualified to deal with mental illnesses.  Suicides in prisons are very common.

The very next day, 2nd August, Ed Vulliamy wrote an article in the Guardian entitled Sentenced to Death?  This was a report of a very clever young man with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who killed himself in Strangeways prison segregation unit.  Such huge cruelty to the mentally ill is being enacted before our eyes.  Apparently about 95 mentally ill prisoners a year commit suicide whilst in prison.

We have to act quickly before more such tragedies occur.  Again, the mother of this second young man did all she could to have him transferred to a therapeutic setting.  There appears to be a complete lack of understanding by the Home Office of the utterly disgraceful punishments in prison for the young mentally ill.

There are 81.547 in our prisons.  The Office of National Statistics found that 9 out of 10 prisoners are mentally ill and/or suffering from the effects of alcohol and/or street drugs entering prison.  The Home Office recently said that 8,000 more prison places would be provided.  That probably means another 7,000 or so more mentally ill and addicted people will be imprisioned.

Addictions are illnesses and those with a psychiatric illness can have their condition rapidly worsened by even small amounts of alcohol and/or street drugs likes cannabis.  Professor Colin Blakemore, Head of the Medical Research Council, has commented that alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs and that it is more dangerous than LSD or cannabis.  Nevertheless the Government has allowed alcohol to be on sale for 24 hours a day and cannabis has been reduced from a Class B to a Class C drug.

Thus we punish, in increasing numbers, the mentally ill offender.  The McNaughton rules of 1843 seem to be totally ignored these days and yet these rules made it clear that if an accused person was of unsound mind they should not be punished for any criminal action they had committed.  It is a most terrible indictment of our present day society that we so often add cruel punishments to the suffering endured by the mentally ill.  They only offended because the illness had affected their body and brain chemistry and made them act in a criminal and/or violent way.

Would you write to the Home Secretary to express your digust at the large scale imprisonment of the mentally ill offender?

Ray Smith

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