Medical Aspects of Management Problems in Maximum Security Prisons

Abstract

Much has been written, especially recently, about the difficulties presented in prisons by the inclusion of mentally disordered or even psychotic offenders who would be more appropriately placed in mental hospitals. This study, carried out in 4 maximum security prisons during 1972–3, concludes that such men do not constitute any more than their fair share of all those who are seen as either disruptive or presenting management problems, probably less. Altogether a fifth of those men identified by prison staff as management problems had had some kind of psychiatric treatment before the sentence began, 4.4 per cent showed evidence of overt mental illness during it and 45 per cent were labelled as having either a psychopathic personality or a personality disorder of some kind. The great majority (85 per cent) of those presenting management problems spent the bulk of their sentences in the general wings of the four prisons and only a handful were felt to be better located in a psychiatric hospital.