Keeping people with mental-health problems out of prison

Every Primary Care Trust in England should set up a team of mental-health professionals to make sure criminals with mental-health problems are identified, and, if possible kept out of prison. That's the recommendation of a new report from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health which claims that services have developed in a piecemeal and haphazard way and calls for spending on this area to be tripled. The report says that diverting criminals with mental-health problems into community health services is good value for money and leads to more people getting better.

You can find out more about the report at

http://www.scmh.org.uk/publications/diversion.aspx?ID=593