'TAKE MENTALLY ILL OUT OF JAILS'

Prisoners with mental health problems should be treated in specialist
units rather than be locked up in jails, the Chief Inspector of
Prisons has said.

Almost two prisoners kill themselves a week in jails in England and
Wales, Anne Owers says in her annual report.

Women, new arrivals, drug users and the mentally ill are most at risk
of self-harm and suicide, she added.

Prison Service Director General Phil Wheatley said such units would
take a substantial problem out of prisons.

Mental health

Ms Owers told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: "It is quite clear that
there are people in prison who don't need to be there and who are
being made worse by being in prison and who could benefit from other
provisions outside prison."

New mental health units needed to be built so that prisons could care
for the people that ought to be there, she added.

Although Mr Wheatley appeared to support the idea, he said it was not
his job to second-guess what the courts should do.

"What we have got to do is to improve the conditions and the treatment
of those who are sent to us and we're trying to improve the mental
health care we offer to prisoners," he said.

The call comes after figures for 2003 showed there had been 94 prison
suicides in total, one less than in 2002 but up on previous years.

Cases of self-harm went up by 30%, with 7,700 men and women
deliberately injuring themselves in the first six months of 2003.

Ms Owers blamed overcrowding, saying the escalating prison population
was having an "insidious and chronic" effect on prisons.

The chief inspector was also very concerned about women who she said
were particularly badly served by the prison system.

"The needs of women are acute and in danger of being neglected or
disregarded," she concluded.

But there was a significant increase in female suicides with 14 women
prisoners taking their own lives in 2003, up from nine the previous
year.

Women were more likely to self-harm than men, the report said, with a
large proportion hurting themselves in the first month of their sentence.

With 25% of women self-harming in local prisons, Ms Owers said: "This
is an indicator, if one were needed, of the extreme levels of distress
among women in prison."

Detoxification

The report highlighted the failure of many prisons' drug
detoxification schemes.

It said 80% of prisoners were suffering from substance misuse when
they arrived in custody.

Ms Owers said the presence of successful detoxification projects was
"inexcusably patchy".

At Styal prison in Cheshire, the report found that inadequate
detoxification severely affected women's physical and mental health
and future chances.

Ms Owers said: "It is inexcusable, that, 18 months after our
inspection, this was still not the case, and in the interim six women
drug-users had died there within a month of admission."

In response the Prison Service pointed out the scale of the problems
it faces.

It said that 90% of all prisoners have a diagnosable mental health
problem, substance abuse problem or both.

A range of initiatives were being developed to ensure that
mentally-ill people who come into contact with the criminal justice
system receive appropriate care in the right setting, it pointed out.

Meanwhile, director general Mr Wheatley said that links to the NHS had
been considerably improved and prisoners were being transferred to
mental health hospitals faster than in the past.

But the chief executive of mental health charity Sane, Marjorie
Wallace, called on Mr Wheatley to provide proof prisoners are getting
psychiatric care, saying "our experience is that they are not."

Community mental health charity Maca said that, while it broadly
welcomed Ms Owers' recommendations, "single-service solutions" like
the suggested specialist mental health units would not go far enough
in removing the problem.