Sainsbury Centre chief executive Angela Greatley A police station is a far cry from a ‘place of safety’ for a person in need of urgent care for their mental health. They can be crowded and chaotic places that can make people with mental health problems feel criminalised. Sainsbury Centre chief executive Angela Greatley

People in a mental health crisis should not be taken to police stations while they wait for an assessment under the Mental Health Act, a group of charities said last week.

Responding to a report from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), members of the Mental Health and Criminal Justice Third Sector Forum voiced their concerns that police stations are still widely being used as ‘places of safety’ for people who appear to need emergency mental health care.

The IPCC report, Police Custody as a Place of Safety under the Mental Health Act 1983, found wide variations in how often police stations are used to detain people in a mental health crisis. It found that the availability of alternative places of safety was vital to reduce the use of police stations and that there were often long delays in assessing people who were detained.

Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 gives the police powers to remove a person who appears to be suffering from mental disorder and who is “in immediate need of care or control” from a public place to a place of safety. Removal may take place if a police officer believes it is necessary in the interests of that person, or for the protection of others. The purpose of removing a person to a place of safety is to enable them to be assessed by a doctor or interviewed by an allied mental health professional, so that the necessary arrangements can be made for their care and treatment.

The report found that:

• During a one year period (2005/06) over 11,500 people were detained in a police cell as a place of safety under section 136 of the Mental Health Act. In the same period 5,900 people were taken to and detained in a hospital.
  
• Just under two thirds of people (61%) detained in police custody were male. The average age of those detained was 36 years, but the ages ranged from 12 to 89 years. Four per cent of detainees were aged 17 or under. Four people were 12 years old.
  
• Almost eight out of 10 (78%) of detainees were White; 4% were Black; 3% were Asian; 2% other ethnic origins and 14% were of unknown ethnicity. When compared to the general population the rate of detention for Black people was almost twice (1.7 times) as high as for White people.
  
• The majority of people (78%) were detained in police custody for 12 hours or less. The average length of time spent in police custody was nine hours and 36 minutes. Ten
  individuals were detained for over the legal limit of 72 hours. Almost two thirds (65%) of
  section 136 detainees arrived in police custody outside of normal office hours (between 6p.m. and 9 a.m.).
  

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of Nacro, the crime reduction charity, said:

“Despite clear guidelines in the code of practice, police stations are being used as a place of safety for detainees twice as often as hospitals. Very few NHS Trusts, police forces and ambulance services have agreed working arrangements to provide an appropriate and safe environment for people detained by the police under the Mental Health Act. A pan-London protocol already exists to ensure each borough has a designated place of safety. This must now be rolled out across all police forces to ensure appropriate care for the most vulnerable people.”

Rethink chief executive Paul Jenkins said:

“Police officers are not trained to provide psychiatric care; police stations are not designed to give sanctuary to someone who is experiencing a psychotic episode which can be a deeply distressing and traumatic event. Taking someone in mental distress to a police station rather than a mental health facility is anachronistic and shouldn’t belong to the twenty-first century. The Government has said that mental health is a top priority; it’s about time we saw a bit of investment and creativity in providing real places of safety for people with mental health conditions when they are needed. Let’s not forget that 1 in 4 of us will have some kind of mental distress during our lifetimes, so, statistically every family in the UK will be touched by mental illness; this isn’t a marginal issue and must stop being treated like one.”

Sainsbury Centre chief executive Angela Greatley said:

“A police station is a far cry from a ‘place of safety’ for a person in need of urgent care for their mental health. They can be crowded and chaotic places that can make people with mental health problems feel criminalised. Yet many police forces say they have no alternative to using police stations because there are no suitable hospital facilities. Hospital-based assessment suites must be provided in all areas with sufficient staff to prevent people being taken to police stations unnecessarily.”

The Royal College of Psychiatrists welcomed the report, saying that it had established a multi-agency group to develop a new set of standards on the use of Section 136. All relevant professional organisations and monitoring agencies were involved, including the IPCC. The Royal College of Psychiatrists said it was pleased that many of the IPCC’s recommendations relate to recommendations made in these new standards, which are due to be published on 29 September 2008.

Dr Michele Hampson, chair of the multi-agency group responsible for developing these new standards, said:

“The IPCC research highlights the need to improve practice in relation to Section 136. However, we do not currently have reliable data on the number of people who are detained in this way.

“Detention under Section 136 is the only civil detention under the Mental Health Act for which no statutory form is required. The Royal College of Psychiatrists wants to see a single, nationally-agreed standard form introduced, and we are pleased that the IPCC has adopted this as one of its recommendations (Recommendation 13). Only then can we begin to improve standards of care for this vulnerable group of individuals”.