NCJ Number
147105
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Delinquency and Deviant Social Behaviour Volume: 34 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1994) Pages: 30-43
Date Published
1994
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This analysis of British patients who have been in long-term detention due to a finding of unfitness to plead or legal insanity focuses on the use of "common sense" criteria of dangerousness and the apparent wish of many of these patients to remain in the hospital.
Abstract
The research was prompted by a study of the operation of the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act of 1964, which revealed that 74 patients were still detained under earlier legislation. Permission was obtained from the Home Office to examine all the files on the patients detained under these acts and also on all those who had been detained under the 1964 Act for 15 years or more up to December 31, 1988. The researchers also obtained permission to interview those patients in the sample who were held in three of the high- security Special Hospitals. There were three main official reasons for the continued detention of these patients. One was that they remained mentally disordered and in need of hospital treatment. Two other reasons were perceptions of their dangerousness and the belief that some were institutionalized and wished to remain in an institution. Although the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 1991 are not retrospective, it would be within the spirit of the act to flag long-term detention cases for special attention in considering removal of the restriction order. 23 references