Bradley Report calls for major overhaul

The Bradley Report - into services for mentally-ill offenders - has been published in the U.K. and calls for major changes in: custodial and prison care, identifying people with mental-health problems and learning difficulties and giving them the appropriate support, and in rehabilitating ex-offenders with mental-health problems. The report says that there is no national vision of what the Government intends to achieve for offenders with a mental illness or learning disability; a problem made worse by the lack of adequate data, different assessment tools being used by different agencies and the fact that there is no common training for different groups within the criminal-justice system. The report makes 82 recommendations including: setting up a Criminal Justice Mental Health Team to be responsible for people's mental health while they are in prison, finding out a person's mental-health needs before they are given an antisocial behaviour order (ASBO) and transferring responsibility for providing healthcare services in police custody to the NHS.

You can download a copy of the Bradley Report at
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_098694