Remands and Psychiatric Assessments in Holloway Prison

Abstract

Non-psychotic remand prisoners who were referred by Holloway's doctors to outside psychiatrists, or who were the subject of court reports, or who were diagnosed as mentally handicapped, were followed up to the time of sentence. Most of the referred women were minor offenders with diagnoses of mental handicap or personality disorder. They were usually refused beds on treatability criteria and then released with non-custodial sentences. Some were highly disturbed, and it seemed that the police who charged them, the courts who remanded them and the prison psychiatrists who referred them, all found it hard to accept that psychiatry had so little to offer these people. Local health and social services need to address the problems raised by this small group of women. Arsonists more often obtained beds than minor offenders, and were likely to be imprisoned when hospital places were not forthcoming.