Iain’s Blog has Moved!

Unfortunately I couldn’t edit my blog using my 3G card and laptop which made it pretty much useless. So now I’ve restarted the blog at a newsite:

www.dangeroustrainer.worrdpress.com

Hope  you will visit!

Iain

Filed under: Impact Training, Uncategorized

What makes an arsonist?

Anjana Ahuj, The Times, 10th February 2009

Fires don’t come any more dramatic than those that have blazed across the Australian bush this week. The bushfires, helped by record summer temperatures and nourished to deadly effect by gales, have left a trail of deaths, injuries and homelessness in their fast-moving wake. Their ferocity has horrified all who have come into contact with them.Well, nearly all. Perhaps one or more individuals will have been watching the flames excitedly and gazing upon their own handiwork. Two people have already been charged with arson, and more arrests are expected.

Why would anybody start a fire intentionally, let alone one that results in so many deaths? In the case of the Australian bushfires we don’t yet know, but when those responsible put a flame to the tinder, they, like all arsonists, had their motivations. It may have been mindless vandalism or an act of bravado to impress delinquent friends; a quest to stir up a little excitement, or a plot to gain an insurance payout. The motive may even have been sexual – for some pyromaniacs (compulsive fire-starters who have a psychiatric condition that leaves them with an uncontrollable urge to start fires), nothing holds more erotic charge than a lit match. And there are remarkably few treatments or interventions for serial offenders, although Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire runs a treatment programme for the most dangerous arsonists.

An obsession with fire can start very young, according to Dr Louise Almond, a psychologist at Liverpool University who has studied the motivations of arsonists in Britain. “Many children between the ages of 5 and 10 are fascinated with fire and want to play with matches,” she says. “This is a normal fascination but it can grow into a curiosity-driven behaviour with their own property, so they may set fire to their toys.” In some cases the consequences are tragic – a handful of children are killed each year in this way. (Some scientists have speculated that a fondness for “fire-play” is a natural consequence of our evolutionary history, and that pyromania happens when the brain circuits that allow us to deal with fire go wrong.)

Of the children – mostly boys – who indulge their curiosity about fire, some 40 per cent persist with the behaviour into their teens; they tend to be children with higher levels of behavioural and psychological problems. But not all arsonists start their behaviour in childhood. Some come to it later in life.

People who start fires deliberately fall into distinct categories. Some are simply hooligans, and their crimes come under the heading of “vandalism”. They are not necessarily mentally disturbed but are prone to antisocial behaviour, such as truanting. For them, starting a fire may achieve the same pointless end as smashing a window.Their targets – often schools – are opportunistic, and the fire might be started by a youth keen to show off to his friends. According to The Burning Issue, a 2002 report on arson written by academics for the Government, to which Dr Almond contributed, this sort of incident accounts for about a third of deliberate fires and is more common in socially deprived areas.

Another category is the “malicious firesetter”, who uses fire as a weapon to get back at someone or something. It is not unheard-of for disgruntled former employees to wreak revenge on their bosses in this way, or for a divorced man to set fire to his ex-wife’s house. It has been mooted that someone with a grievance against the Australian Government might be motivated to start a bushfire, because it devastates Government-owned land.

Then there is the “criminal firesetter”, who lights the petrol-doused rag for criminal reasons – perhaps to cover up another crime, such as murder or robbery. Joyriders often burn out the cars they steal, to cover their tracks. Criminal firesetters may simply want an insurance payout for an old car or a business that is about to go into liquidation. Dr Almond says: “We know there are professional fire-setters out there, who will use very sophisticated techniques to burn down, say, a failing business. They use lots of accelerants and start fires in multiple places. But they are not easy to track down – it’s like trying to find a hitman.” She notes that there has been a rise in vehicle arson as the value of scrap metal has plummeted – now more people are setting fire to their cars to claim on the insurance.

But perhaps the most perplexing category is the person who starts a fire for reasons of “emotional expression” (also known as psychological fire-setting). This category, which accounts for just over a quarter of fires started deliberately, encompasses pyromaniacs, who find a kind of release, sometimes sexual, in starting fires (and sometimes achieve gratification through watching the fire brigade dealing with their activities). Pyromania is a psychiatric condition that can be treated with drugs but, as with other mental health problems, the results of drug treatment vary from patient to patient.

Pyromaniacs represent only a small proportion of emotionally motivated fire-starters. “Some people use fire as a way of communicating their pain, or as a cry for attention,” Dr Almond says.

Among those in the “emotional” classification is the would-be hero who starts the fire, then rushes to report it and/or deal with it. Firefighters and security guards have been known to do this. Fleur Lombard, the first female firefighter to die during peacetime, was a victim of this type of arson in 1996. Martin Cody, a security guard, spent a troubled childhood dreaming of becoming a hero, and started a fire in a Bristol supermarket on his first day at work. He even helped the deputy manager to escape it, by smashing a window. Cody phoned a friend to boast about what he had done. Unfortunately, Lombard did not survive the fire and Cody was jailed for manslaughter and arson.

Meanwhile, the tragedy in Australia continues to unfold. In 2004, the Australian Institute of Criminology recognised that bushfires started deliberately were a specific form of arson that needed closer investigation. It reported that “in most cases it is likely that adults who set bushfires do so for excitement or thrills, or the need for attention”.

The report also raised the disturbing prospect that some fire-setters, seeing bushfires splashed all over the media, could be tempted to add their own efforts, whether they were thrill-seekers or motivated by the prospect of being hailed a hero: “The response of fire services may be rapid and on a large scale, and is likely to be heightened by a sense of urgency which adds to the overall experience.

“The existence of other fires and community concern will increase the likelihood of extensive media coverage. This, in turn, will increase the potential for community recognition and the according of ‘hero’ status to those for whom this is a motivating factor.”

But perhaps we can only truly understand by listening to the words of an emotional fire-starter. Sarah Wheaton – a pseudonym – once wrote of her life as a pyromaniac for the American Psychiatric Association.

She wrote that she “revel(s) in the notoriety of the unknown fire-setter”, even if it was someone else who dropped the match: “I watch the local news broadcasts for fires that have been set each day and read the local newspapers in search of articles dealing with suspicious fires. I read literature about fires, fire-setters, pyromania, pyromaniacs, arson and arsonists. I contact government agencies about fire information and keep up-to-date on the arson detection methods that investigators use. I watch movies and listen to music about fires. My dreams are about fires that I have set, want to set or wish I had set…

“A fire not my own offers excitement and some tension relief. However, any fire set by someone else is one I wish I had set. The knowledge that there is another fire-setter in the area may spark feelings of competition or envy in me and increase my desire to set bigger and better fires.”

That must be the last thing that those in the Australian bush around Melbourne want to hear.

Terrible legacy of the fire-starters

A fire at an East London warehouse (above) in May 2004 destroyed more than £50million of modern British art, including 16 Damien Hirst paintings and Tracy Emin’s £40,000 tent. Another part of the warehouse had been burgled and the thieves were thought to have started the fire to cover their tracks.

A 15-year-old boy caused £1.5 million in damage to Manor Comprehensive School in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, when he set fire to it. The teenager told police that he hated school and wanted to burn it down so he wouldn’t have to go. He was given three years’ detention.

An arson attack on an Iranian cinema in 1978 claimed more than 400 lives. The country’s Intelligence Service was implicated in causing the fire at the Cinema Rex, but the Shah of Iran at the time, Mohammad Reza, said that Islamic militants were responsible.

In June 2000 a homeless fruit-picker set fire to the Palace Backpackers Hostel in Childers, Queensland, Australia, while dozens of teenagers slept inside. Fifteen backpackers were killed, seven of them British. Robert Long, who had a history of mental illness, was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years for the attack.

Rogue property developers were accused of starting forest fires that swept across Greece in summer 2007. More than 60 people died in the blazes, which were fanned by strong winds. It was claimed that arsonists had been paid by developers who wanted to get round planning laws.

Chloe Lambert

Filed under: Other Mental Health, Violence

Changing Suicide Rates

Figures released by the ONS showed that the number of people in the UK committing suicide is continuing to fall and is now at its lowest level in 17 years.

The ONS said that, in 2007, there were 5,377 suicides in adults aged 15 and over, 177 fewer than in 2006 and 940 fewer than in 1991. Three-quarters of the suicides in 2007 were by men – a proportion that has remained fairly constant since 1991.

The suicide rate for men in 2007 was 16.8 per 100,000 people, while the rate for women was five per 100,000. Suicides among men reached a peak in 1998 – 21.1 per 100,000 – but the rate has since fallen. Suicide rates among women have been consistently much lower and have decreased more steadily.

In the early 1990s, the highest suicide rates for men and women were in those aged 75 and over. Rates in this group have since decreased and were among the lowest in 2007.

In recent years, the highest suicide rates in men have been in those aged 15-44, while the highest rates among women have been in the 45-74 age bracket. Suicide rates in women aged 15-44 have consistently been the lowest and fell to 4.2 per 100,000 in 2007.

Filed under: Suicide, Uncategorized , Office of National Statistics, Suicide, suicide rates

Differences In Recovered Memories Of Childhood Sexual Abuse

ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2009)
When a child experiences a traumatic event, such as sexual abuse, it may not be until well into adulthood that they remember the incident. It is not known how adults are able to retrieve long-forgotten memories of abuse and there has been some controversy as to the authenticity of these reports.

The results of a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that there are important differences between people who gradually recover memories of abuse during suggestive therapy sessions and those who recover memories of abuse more spontaneously. Psychologist Elke Geraerts of the University of St. Andrews and her colleagues reveal that these people are either susceptible to recovering false memories or have a tendency to forget earlier recollections of the abuse.

The study volunteers included 120 women who were classified into four groups, based on their responses during a preliminary interview. The groups were: women who spontaneously recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse on their own, women who gradually recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse during suggestive therapy sessions, women who had never forgotten having been sexually abused and women who had never been sexually abused. All of these women participated in a false-memory test.

They studied a list of related words (such as bed, rest, awake and tired). After a few minutes, they were shown a set of words (which included ones they had studied as well as new words) and had to indicate which words were on the original list.

The results showed that the women who recovered their memories of childhood sexual abuse during suggestive therapy were the most prone to false memories. For instance, women from this group were more likely to select sleep (in the example above) as having been on the original list, when in fact, it was not.

The women then participated in another memory test, which measured the participants’ propensity to forget what they had just remembered. The results of this test revealed that the group who spontaneously recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse was the most likely to forget that they had successfully remembered certain words earlier.

The authors note that their findings argue against the generalization that all recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are based on false recollections and “that such effects appear to be associated with suggestive therapy, not recovery of childhood sexual abuse in general.” They conclude that this research has important implications for clinicians who treat patients reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.

The authors suggest that these clinicians should consider the context of the recovered memories to most effectively treat their patients.
________________________________________

Adapted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

Filed under: trauma , memories, Recovered, Sexual Abuse, trauma

The truth behind prison suicides

A fall last year in the number of prisoners taking their own lives is good news, but while we continue to jail mentally ill people the problem will continue, says Erwin James

A young prisoner at Ashield young offenders’ institution.

‘Sixty-one suicides in a year is as unacceptable as 100′, says Erwin James.

“There is never any room for complacency in our work to prevent these deaths,” said justice minister Shahid Malik in response to the fall in the number of people in prison taking their own lives in 2008. The drop from an average of 91 self-inflicted deaths per year over the previous three years to just 61 last year is noteworthy. (In 2007 eight women took their lives in prisons; only one woman took her life in custody last year.)

Staff vigilance has to be one reason for the lower figure. Prison staff rarely receive good press and it is easy to forget the significant number of prison officers who actually enjoy their job for the right reasons, and who care about the vulnerable people they have to supervise. Another reason has to be the army of volunteers who give their time to those who are struggling with their prison situation, particularly the Samaritans.

The Samaritans managed to get a foothold into our prisons after 15-year-old Philip Knight hanged himself in his cell in Swansea prison in 1990. Kathy Biggar, former vice-chairwoman of the “Sams”, and Jim Heyes, the then governor of Swansea jail, came up with the idea of the Listener scheme, whereby groups of prisoners are trained by the Samaritans to provide listening ears for fellow prisoners in distress.

The scheme was so successful that it was expanded throughout the prison system, so that today one key performance indicator (KPI) in every prison in the country is the provision and quality of its Listener scheme. Most prisons now get at least one visit a month from their local Samaritans who give on going support and training to the Listeners and to prison staff if requested. The relationship that has developed between the Samaritans and our prisons is one of the best social initiatives to have emerged over the past 15 years.

So a bit of good news for the prison service at last. But 61 people dead in a year in our prisons by their own hands is as unacceptable as 100. And let’s bear in mind this figure will have little impact on the overall statistics regarding the likelihood of self-inflicted deaths in prison unless it can be sustained for a few years. The suicide rate for men in prison is five times higher than for men in the community. Women in prison are 36 times more likely to take their own lives than women in the community. And a study published in 2003 found that 72% of those who took their own lives in prison had a history of mental disorder (over half had symptoms suggestive of mental disorder at reception into prison).

Four years ago the then minister for prisons, Paul Goggins, reported in a debate that 20% of all prisoners in the UK had four of the five major mental health disorders.

I used to think that suicide in prison was the ultimate means of empowerment. Prison engenders intense feelings of helplessness. Living with limited choices, little control or responsibility, and shouldering the opprobrium of society can make you feel backed into a corner. In those circumstances, it might not seem to be a totally irrational act. Most people who go to prison contemplate suicide, even if only fleetingly. The evidence shows however that the majority of people who carry it through are mentally unwell. Mr Malik made no mention of that fact. The reality is that the only way to sustain a relatively low prison suicide rate is to address our complacency about jailing mentally ill people.

Filed under: Suicide, Uncategorized , prisons, Suicide, suicide rates

The facts about suicide are far less alarming than the media portray

Oliver James, The Guardian, Saturday 24 January 2009

A completed suicide casts a long, dark shadow on families. Yet there is much misinformation about who is at risk and how common it is. Many parents will, I hope, find the facts reassuring. The first myth is that suicide is increasing. Actually, it has been falling for many years: from 6,129 cases in 1994 to 5,576 in 2006, with the decline in numbers occurring almost annually.

The second myth is that it is a young person’s plague. Virtually no children under 14 do it (22 a year, albeit 22 too many) and the total for 15-34-year-olds is 1,400. While it may be the second largest cause of death in 15-24-year-olds (car accidents being the highest), that is because hardly any in this age group die. The real increase in suicide has been in the 35-64-year-olds, up 15% from 2,950 to 3,400.

The third and most widely touted myth is that suicide has become an epidemic among young men, totemic of a “crisis in masculinity”. In 1994, there were 1,850 in the 15-34-year-old male age group, dropping steadily year on year down to 1,200 in 2006. In other words, the real story is that suicide by young men has fallen by over one third.

What is true is that, in much of the world, men outnumber women in completed suicide. In this country, it is at least three times more men. However, this is not some biological given – there are many cultures in which women exceed men. One of the most suicidal groups on earth, for example, is rural middle-aged Chinese women.

It is a curiosity of suicide statistics that the gender differences for those who attempt it are almost exactly the reverse of those who complete it: women are much more likely to deliberately self-harm than men. Superficially, the explanation is that men tend to use much more fatal methods, like hanging or jumping off high buildings, whereas women take ineffective overdoses. However, that prompts the question of why, to which there are as yet no satisfactory answers.

In most developed nations, women are twice as likely as men to be depressed. We know from psychological autopsies that the great majority of people who killed themselves were depressed. That makes it all the stranger that relatively fewer women die this way. A possible factor is that men abuse substances much more than women (about twice as much) – women are more likely to visit their GP and accept pills or therapy. It’s possible that the disinhibition of booze or drugs means men are more likely to take extreme measures to end their lives.

But the remarkably reassuring fact is that only one in 50 young people who attempt suicide dies: 24,000 people aged 10-19 attempt it each year, at least three quarters of them female, but fewer than 500 die. Even allowing for a great many pleas for help, you would have thought that a higher proportion than this would end in tragedy.

All in all, if you are a parent the facts about suicide are a great deal less worrying than the tosh you read in many newspapers. Just as we are
encouraged to fantasise about creepy strangers making off with our little
girls when this is so rare that it is not worth giving the time of day to, so with suicide: forget your teenage Smiths fan for whom the GP wants to prescribe antidepressants: if anything, the person you should worry about is any 35-64-year-old man in the household.

For information about suicide go to samaritans.org/your_emotional_health/about_suicide.aspx.

Filed under: Suicide, Uncategorized , media, Suicide, suicide rates

Dangerous and severe personality disorder – Questions and Answers

The condition known as dangerous and severe personality disorder has, in fact, no legal or medical basis. Yet the government is pouring £126m over three years to develop a variety of DSPD services. David Batty explains

* David Batty
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 April 2002 09.44 BST
* Article history

What is dangerous and severe personality disorder?

Personality disorder refers to patterns of behaviour or experience resulting from a person’s particular personality that differ markedly from those expected by society and lead to distress or suffering to that person or to others. The government first introduced the term DSPD in a consultation paper Managing Dangerous People with Severe Personality Disorder in 1999, which proposed how to detain and treat a small minority of mentally disordered offenders who pose a significant risk of harm to others and themselves. Specialist services to deal with these people, most of whom are thought to be serious violent and sex offenders, were proposed in the white paper Reforming the Mental Health Act in December 2000.

What are the traits associated with DSPD?

The condition’s characteristics have yet to be clearly defined. But it is thought to be an extreme form of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) – the diagnosis most commonly associated with psychopathy. The key traits of ASPD include failure to make intimate relationships, impulsiveness, lack of guilt, and not learning from adverse experience. ‘Psychopathic disorder’ is a legal term used in the current mental health legislation to refer to people who have “a persistent disorder or disability of mind… which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct.”

How many people have DSPD?

The white paper to reform the mental health act states that 2,00-2,400 people in England and Wales are estimated to have DSPD, although some government officials say there are up to 2,500. According to the Home Office, about 1,400 are estimated to already be in prison. A further 400 are estimated to be patients in high security psychiatric hospitals, with between 300 and 600 at large in the community. About 98% of those with DSPD are believed to be men. However, with the new disorder’s definition still unclear, many psychiatrists contend these figures are just speculation.

Where will people with DSPD be treated?

By 2004 there will be 300-320 high security places to detain, assess and treat DSPD. The 92-bed unit on D-wing at Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire, began assessing prisoners last September, offering treatment from March. Another 80 places will be provided at a newly built unit at Frankland prison, Durham, from early 2004. There will be 140 additional places for those with DSPD in special hospitals by April 2004. A new 70-bed unit at Rampton hospital, Nottinghamshire, is due to open in October 2003. Another unit will be built at Broadmoor hospital, Berkshire. DSPD services will also be set up at medium secure prisons and hospitals and in the community to treat and support those assessed as safe to be released or discharged. Community programmes are expected to be piloted in south London and the north-east.

How is DSPD diagnosed?

Assessment on the DSPD unit at Whitemoor high security prison lasts 14 weeks. Inmates undergo psychometric tests to assess their dangerousness and to measure the severity of their personality disorder. They also have a series of interviews with a psychiatrist, while care staff record how disturbed and challenging their behaviour is from day to day. The clinical team then evaluates whether a connection can be made between dangerousness and severe personality disorder by examining the inmate’s past and current offending behaviour and how they interact with other prisoners and staff. Jamie Bennett, head of the Whitemoor DSPD unit, said prisoners would need a long history of sex or violent offences to meet the criteria.

What treatment is there for DSPD?

Inmates at Whitemoor and Rampton receive a psychological therapy called dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), which aims to help them respond to everyday situations in a problem solving manner rather than emotionally and aggressively. This more positive mindset should enable them to take part in rehabilitation programmes, such as reoffending reduction courses. However, DBT has predominantly been used to treat women with borderline personality disorder who deliberately harm themselves and there is little evidence it will prove effective in helping those with DSPD.

What prompted the DSPD programme?

Much of the impetus for the DSPD programme has come from high-profile cases such as that of Michael Stone, who in 1996 attacked Josie Russell and killed her mother and sister several years after his personality disorder was deemed untreatable. The Home Office regards those with DSPD as “a group hitherto poorly served by criminal justice or mental health services” and believes “the serious nature of the crimes they typically commit has a disproportionate impact on the public’s fear of crime.” The Mental Health Act 1983 only allows people to be committed to hospital where psychiatrists believe the person is treatable and many do not believe personality disorder is. But proposed reform of the mental health act would allow detention of people with PD – even, in some cases, if they had committed no crime.

How much will the programme cost?

The government has set aside £126m over three years to develop high security, medium security and community DSPD services. The prison service has been allocated £70m and the NHS £56m. Although Home Office officials were unable to estimate treatment costs in high security settings, Dr Ian Keitch, head of DSPD at Rampton, said treatment at the hospital was projected to cost £180,000 per bed per year. Although this is £30,000 more than current treatment costs for patients believed to have DSPD, Dr Keitch said this was less than treatment costs for female self-harmers – £200,000. However, he admitted the cost could not be justified on current evidence. Peter Tyrer, professor of community psychiatry at Imperial College, said a £2m three-year research programme to assess the effectiveness of the treatment programmes, should lead to improved cost efficiency.

Why is the term so controversial?

DSPD currently has no legal or medical basis and many doctors regard it as a political invention. A survey of nearly 1,200 psychiatrists published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2000 found almost two-thirds disagreed with the plan for detaining people with personality disorders, and almost a third said they might boycott it. There is no firm evidence base for the disorder or the new assessment and treatment programmes. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says there is no “entirely satisfactory” diagnosis of antisocial traits that threaten public safety. A recent study in the Lancet warned DSPD is so vaguely defined that six people would have to be detained to prevent one from acting violently, raising major concerns about civil liberties.

Filed under: Violence , Dangerous People, Psychopathy, Severe Personality Disorder, Violence

Dangerous people with severe personality disorder British proposals for managing them are glaringly wrong—and unethical

BMJ. 1999 October 30; 319(7218): 1146–1147.

PMCID: PMC1116939
Copyright © 1999, British Medical Journal

Paul E Mullen, professor of forensic psychiatry
Monash University and Institute of Forensic Mental Health, Victoria, 3084 Australia

This summer the British Department of Health and the Home Office jointly issued a paper on Managing Dangerous People with Severe Personality Disorder.1 The paper was apparently “based on the results of extensive informal discussions” and sets out the government’s policy objectives in dealing with what the paper calls the “dangerous severely personality disordered.” The paper avoids descending into the apparently unending debate over what is, or is not, a personality disorder and to what extent personality disorders are treatable and attempts to cut through the gordian knot with what presumably are intended as straightforward and practical proposals for action. If only it were that simple.

This government “framework for the future” proposes legal powers for detaining indefinitely people with dangerous severe personality disorder. Specialists, including psychiatrists, are to be employed both to better identify people with dangerous severe personality disorder and to develop “approaches to detention and management.” Finally a comprehensive programme of research is to be established to support development of policy and practice. The proposals make a point of insisting that “indeterminate detention will be authorised only on the basis of evidence from an intensive specialist assessment” (my italics).

There are people whose antisocial and self damaging behaviours are at least in part a product of abiding character traits such as impulsivity and suspiciousness combined with abnormalities of mental state, including instability of mood and dissociative symptoms. Such distressed and disturbed individuals currently attract little interest from mental health professionals and even less from those who fund services. Clinical experience suggests, however, that such disorders can be improved, if not cured, even if research has failed to pinpoint the best therapeutic approaches. Severely personality disordered individuals are over-represented among recidivist offenders, though such disorders do not inevitably lead to serious offending; nor are serious offenders drawn exclusively from their ranks.

Crime and violence are major political issues. Surveys indicate growing public support for more punitive approaches to offenders,2 and populist governments around the world, be they left, right, or third way leaning, fall over themselves to respond to law and order agendas. In England and Wales section 2 of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act already provides for discretionary life sentences for those convicted a second time for serious violence or a sexual offence. The courts have, however, shown a signal lack of enthusiasm for imposing such sentences, frustrating the government’s carceral enthusiasms. The proposals set out in this document openly acknowledge the hope that the judicial reluctance to sentence on the basis of predicted future behaviour will be reduced if courts are provided with medical evidence that offenders have dangerous severe personality disorder.

What is wrong then with proposals that promise far greater resources for a relatively ignored group of mentally disordered people and at the same time hold out the prospect of increased community safety? If dangerousness was really a characteristic of some personality disordered individuals rather than a characteristic of some acts by some of them; if the proposed special centres, with their multidisciplinary teams armed with “batteries of standardised procedures,” could reliably recognise dangerous severe personality disorder; if these proposals were really about providing care and treatment for the personality disordered; and if health professionals were really judges and jailers charged with maintaining public order, then perhaps these proposals would be worth taking seriously. But none of these assumptions holds true.

Enthusiastic advocates exist for actuarial methods of predicting future criminality, and some place considerable theoretical emphasis on the contribution of personality.3,4 In practice, however, the probability of future offending is predicted most effectively by past offending.5 Variables such as being a substance abuser or having a history of being abused as a child, have significant, if less consistent, associations with increased rates of future violence.4,6 Mental health variables contribute little to such predictive characteristics. A diagnosis of psychopathy, or antisocial personality disorder, often does little more than recycle the history of prior offending behaviours in a different form, producing a potentially spurious association between personality disorder and offending. In practice, therefore, we would be identifying people with dangerous severe personality disorder not on mental health, or even personality, variables but on their past offending, their past history of victimisation, and their current drug and alcohol habits. Except for substance abuse, none of these predictive factors is open to change.

The government’s proposals masquerade as extensions to mental health services. They are in fact proposals for preventive detention, not too far removed from the dangerous offender and sexual predator laws in North America.5They aim to make judges more amenable to imposing discretionary life sentences. They are intended, as Eastman observed in these pages,7 to circumvent the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits preventive detention except in those of unsound mind. With their promises of new money and research funding, they hope to bribe doctors into complicity in the indefinite detention of certain selected offenders. Discussion of the ethical dilemmas that these proposals present for health professionals is absent, presumably because they are ethically and professionally indefensible.

There is a crying need for mental health services for severely personality disordered individuals. Such services would decrease the morbidity and staggering mortality associated with these conditions. In the process they would contribute to community safety. The British government’s proposals largely ignore this central issue of developing appropriate treatment services in favour of creating a system for locking up men and women who frighten officials. On first reading this document created both disappointment and foreboding. On more careful consideration it became clear that the contradictions were so glaring, the deceptions so open and palpable, and the agenda so obvious, that these proposals can surely not have any chance of influencing reality.
Top
>References

References
1.
Department of Health; Home Office. Managing dangerous people with severe personality disorder. London: Home Office; 1999. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/cpd/persdis.htm http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/cpd/persdis.htm.
2.
Kury, H; Ferdinand, T. Public opinion and punitivity. Int J Law Psych. 1999;22:373–392. [PubMed]
3.
Hare, RD. The Hare PCL-R: some issues concerning its use and misuse. Legal Criminol Psychol. 1998;3:99–112.
4.
Quinsey, VL; Harris, GT; Rice, ME; Cormier, CA. Violent offenders: appraising and managing risk. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 1998.
5.
Heilbrun, K; Ogloff, JRP; Picarello, K. Dangerous offender statutes in the United States and Canada: implications for risk assessment. Int J Law Psych. 1999;22:393–415. [PubMed]
6.
Steadman, HJ; Mulvey, E; Monahan, J; Robbins, PC; Appelbaum, PS; Grisso, T, et al. Violence by people discharged from acute psychiatric inpatient facilities and by others in the same neighborhoods. Arch Gen Psych. 1998;55:393–401. [PubMed]
7.
Eastman, N. Public health psychiatry or crime prevention? BMJ. 1999;318:549–551. [PubMed]

Filed under: Violence , Dangerous People, Severe Personality Disorder

Seeking solitary: prison gang wars force fearful inmates to plead for segregation

· Jail watchdogs warn of growth of gang culture
· Influx of new generation of violent inmates blamed

* Alan Travis, home affairs editor
* The Guardian, Monday 18 February 2008
* Article history

Gang members

The segregation units in Britain’s high security prisons used to be full of prisoners being punished for breaking the rules or being held in solitary because they were too dangerous to mix with others.

But now the “seg units” at institutions such as Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire are packed with a different kind of prisoner: those so fearful for their safety that they have asked to be isolated for their own protection.

Jail watchdogs have warned that an influx of rival gang members from Britain’s inner cities has fuelled a new wave of fear and violence at the five maximum security prisons.

This new generation, who have been schooled in street gun and gang culture, bring with them deeply held gang allegiances. Once inside they use all their ingenuity to equip themselves with homemade, but nevertheless lethal, weapons to settle scores with rival gang members and protect their illicit trade in drugs and mobile phones.

Ministers have been warned by independent monitoring boards (IMBs) at two of the five prisons that the problem has become so acute that it has now become “extremely difficult” to find enough category A accommodation to separate sentenced members from rival gangs. They confirm that the segregation units at both jails are occupied by a majority of prisoners who have been asked to be isolated for their own safety.

The disclosure of this high-level concern over gang culture in the high security estate comes as the prison population in England and Wales reached a new record at the weekend of 81,918 – just 100 places short of its maximum “bust” capacity.

The latest IMB report from the Whitemoor high security prison says the rising number of prisoners from different gangs has already sparked short periods of unrest on the wings and is now a major problem affecting all five of the high security “dispersal” prisons in England and Wales.

At Long Lartin prison, Worcestershire, the monitoringboard has told ministers that an atmosphere of superficial calm domesticity inside coexists with the threat – and the practice – of violence.

“Some men are known to suffer injuries; others probably go unreported. Many more are fearful and seek protection,” says the latest report from the watchdog to the justice secretary, Jack Straw.

“At least part of the explanation must lie with the wave of young men who have reached prison in the last few years. Typically they are in their 20s and undergoing very long sentences; some of them face more years in prison than they have already lived. Some bring with them deep allegiances and very strong antipathies.”

The IMB’s annual report says that among them are men for whom the use of weapons is not so much a tactical decision but more an expression of a way of life. “They devote much of their energy, influence and ingenuity to equipping themselves with blades and stabbers which, although improvised, have an utterly lethal potential. The rate at which these were being discovered during the middle part of the year was deeply alarming.”

The result is a frequently full segregation unit, the majority of whom are prisoners who have sought protection because of violent threats over debts they can’t repay or because other prisoners simply make life on the wing intolerable for them.

The underlying problem of this armed gang culture in top security prisons is not going to go away, according to the IMB, as long as grave crimes go on being committed in the cities and extraordinarily long sentences are being handed down.

“These prisoners are going to be a great challenge,” it says. “Managing them successfully calls for a substantial effort by all who contribute to intelligence, wing allocation and searching. It also needs the high security estate to make thoughtful and well-informed allocations between its dispersal prisons.”

At Whitemoor the IMB has told ministers that as more gang-related prisoners arrive staff have fewer options. “This is a matter affecting the whole of the high-security estate,” it says. “Prison officers are having to cope with more and more volatile mixes of prisoners because the ability to move individuals around is now very limited.”

A Prison Service spokesman said: “We recognise that gang associations are an issue in prisons, including the high-security estate. Allocation decisions in the high-security estate are based on available intelligence on the individual and the risk posed to him and by him.”

He said that a specific project was under way looking at how best to develop options on how to deal with gang membership. “Governors and directors of prisons are responsible for ensuring the development, implementation and maintenance of a local violence-reduction strategy. This must include consideration of sources of conflict that are imported from outside prison, particularly gang-related issues.”

Current Prison Service policy does not separate rival gang members as a matter of course and says it will be done only where there is an established risk of disorder or to the safety of staff and other prisoners.

An agreed “rotational system” is put into operation when a high number of gang members are present in a single jail.

Filed under: Violence , gangs, prisons, Segregation Units, Violence

Calendar – Free Training Dates

One of the biggest problems in arranging in-house training courses is finding mutually convenient dates. Now, at least, you can see which dates are not possible – just click on the link below.

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Thanks

Iain Bourne

Filed under: Impact Training, Uncategorized , availability, calendar, dates, diary, Impact Training