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Mr. Michael: It is more likely that such circumstances will be identified so that appropriate action can be taken, and we claim no more than that for the amendments in dealing with the sort of cases to which my hon. Friend refers.
Mr. Soley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification, which he also gave me when I intervened earlier. There is a real possibility here of identifying some mentally ill offenders at an early stage and of taking appropriate action.
6 pm
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth referred to the experiment at Clerkenwell court--a court I know extremely well, as I served there for some
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In an inner-city court such as Clerkenwell--the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) referred to this matter--it can be difficult to deal with these cases. Clerkenwell covers two major rail terminals--King's Cross and Euston. Many of the people dealt with by the court were on the move, had shattered life styles and were mentally ill. It does not surprise me that a large proportion of such defendants are mentally ill, and the figures suggest that close to 50 per cent. have a definable mental illness. If the figures are correct, they give us advance warning and an idea of what could be achieved by better co-ordination between the criminal justice system and the NHS on mental health.
For example, I wish to refer to section 38 of the Mental Health Act 1983, which allows for detention in an NHS hospital for a period of observation. There is no doubt that many people who end up in magistrates courts are on the edge of mental illness, and are facing an incipient breakdown or perhaps full mental illness. Having the section 38 procedure readily available to a court--because a psychiatrist is present--could be of great benefit not only to the court and the offender, but to the community.
When I was a probation officer at Clerkenwell, people who one knew to be psychiatrically ill--and who the magistrates knew to be ill from their general judgment of the defendant's demeanour and behaviour--were nevertheless released into the community immediately because one could not justify a custodial sentence or a remanding in custody except in special circumstances; he or she might be a danger to other people, for example. The defendant would be released again and could possibly break down within the community. If we could do more to focus our attention on people when they first come before magistrates courts, it would be beneficial in terms of spotting the mentally ill.
I emphasise the importance of the care in the community procedures. I am a great supporter of care in the community in principle, but without the proper resources care in the community is a disaster, as has been demonstrated by the Zito case and others. The tragedy--as many hon. Members will be aware from their postbags--is that many people are not getting the degree of care in the community that they need to prevent a collapse into a full psychotic state, perhaps because they are not taking a course of drugs. It is possible--although it is important to remember that this occurs only in a minority of cases--that they will resort to some sort of dangerous and violent offending behaviour.
The idea of having a psychiatrist present or available to a court is useful. I do not pretend that a psychiatrist should be present in every court in the land, but my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth has hit on a good point in saying that it would be an advantage in a number of areas. It would enable us to spot those people who are supposed to be getting care in the community but are not getting it, and who are, as a result, offending. At the moment, such a person appears in court--more often than not for a petty offence--and is either remanded on bail or in custody for a psychiatric
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The Minister must address an issue that the Minister of State failed to address on the previous occasion that I spoke on this matter. The issue is relevant to the group of amendments and deals with the way in which we treat mentally ill people who murder. As I stated previously, we persist in having a full inquiry when someone who is mentally ill murders, although no such inquiry takes place when a sane person murders. I am not sure what the point of that is. These inquiries cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and we must consider carefully whether the system should continue. I do not expect an immediate answer, but we must look at whether it is sensible to have full and expensive inquiries every time a mentally ill person murders. Perhaps we should have an assessment of the causes and the background of the murder which might apply to the sane and the insane.
It is bizarre that we spend vast amounts of money on inquiries--some of which produce useful conclusions, some of which do not. But the present system suggests that a murder committed by a mentally ill person is more fearful or terrifying than a conventional murder. Frankly, if one has been murdered, it does not matter too much whether the person who did it was mentally ill or not. That is a serious point, and we should assess more effectively the background to murder rather than the background of those who murder and who are psychiatrically ill. This is a complex area that I know the Department has thought about from time to time. I will give the Minister time to respond to the matter before I leave for an appointment that I must keep. But if I am not here when he replies, I assure him that I will look carefully at his comments in Hansard.
My final point deals with the issue of psychopathy, which was raised by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery. Most psychiatrists agree that psychopathy is not a treatable condition, and that is why it is not described as such in the Mental Health Act 1983. It is true that some drugs and other forms of treatment can help, but we are on a slippery slope if we start giving drug treatments to people who are not defined as mentally ill under the Mental Health Act. Some special units have been set up to deal with people who have a psychopathic personality, as it has been labelled--frankly, that is a bit of a dustbin label. We must concede that there is no known method of treatment that guarantees any form of advantage, but there are ways of treating and constraining such people that one can have reasonable confidence are helpful.
We should give more attention to such people who come before the courts and need treatment, as the general public's image of a psychopath is of a raving lunatic who is out to kill. In fact, the vast majority of psychopaths--as they are labelled--are rather inadequate and pathetic individuals who repeat their offences over and over again. They do not seem to learn from their behaviour, and generally are not liked by anyone. They are often very isolated individuals as well.
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In all seriousness, there is a problem because we write people off with a dustbin label and talk about psychiatric treatment, which in most cases is not relevant, appropriate or effective. There are treatments, such as group therapy and other treatments in a residential setting, which can help such people. If we want to stop the persistent minor offenders who are a menace to everyone and whose behaviour in public causes discomfort to most people, we might do better to focus on such treatments rather than on drug treatments, which have certainly not been proven to offer any advantage and can have dangerous outcomes.
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham):
The concerns about these matters have been brought home to me in at least two serious constituency cases in the past couple of years, in which crimes were committed by people who were not given adequate psychiatric counselling or assessment before release.
This is an example of a matter on which Parliament should work at its best. The new clauses are practical and sensible and have been tabled by Opposition Members of considerable experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) is a Justice of the Peace, the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) is a Queen's counsel and my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has deep experience of the probation service.
The public will ask why the Government refuse to accept new clauses that suggest experiments, are modest in their reach and would none the less contribute to people feeling a little more secure about the process of sentencing in magistrates courts. The underlying philosophy is simple: an ounce of prevention or of knowledge is worth more than a ton of cure or retribution.
I shall refer the Minister, perhaps after the debate, to a wonderful book by a leading Rotherham criminal solicitor, Mr. Stephen Smith, who works in the local magistrates courts. The book contains true-life stories of the past 20 years of his life as a professional solicitor. Time and again, he has had to defend the most inadequate and pathetic characters, who make great copy for a book but who have not been given a helping hand. They do not need an overdose of counselling, but they merely need a helping hand in terms of assessment, to allow the criminal justice system to treat them with due respect as citizens and human beings.
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