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Managing the Mentally Disordered Offender presses the case for better health care of mentally disturbed law breakers, and the need to divert them from unnecessary imprisonment.
Mentally disordered offenders present particular problems in our society, which wants both to sympathise and to punish. How do we get the balance right between sympathy towards their illness and genuine worries about their offending behaviour? What do we do for - and about - people wo have been released from prison yet we suspect continue to pose risks to the safety of others?
With specialist contributors from criminology, criminal justice, social work, probation practice and the law, Managing the Mentally Disordered Offender stresses the importance of professional cooperation in community-based services, whilst acknowledgin the psychologically demanding nature of working with mentally disordered people, and ther very real challenges of attempting to contain their wrongdoing without recourse to the repressiveness of imprisonment.
List of contents
Preface Introduction 1 Mental disorder and social order: underlying themes in crime management 2 Public Inquiries in mental health (with particular reference to the Blackwood case at Broadmoor and the patient-complaints of Ashworth Hospital) 3 The police and the mentally disordered in the community 4 Diverting mentally disordered offenders from custody 5 Recreating mayhem? Developing understanding for social work with mentally disordered people 6 Multi-agency risk management of mentally disordered sex offenders: a probation case study 7 The Parole Board and the mentally disordered offender 8 Control and compassion: the uncertain role of Mental Health Review Tribunals in the management of the mentally ill 9 Thinking horses, not zebras 10 A balance of possibilities: some concluding notes on rights, risks and the mentally disordered offender
About the author
David Webb is Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Science at Nottingham Trent University.
Robert Harris is Professor in the Department of Politics and Asian Studies at the University of Hull.
Summary
Presses the case for better mental health care for mentally disturbed law breakers, and the need to divert them from unnecessary imprisonment.
