Annual Report 2014 of the National Preventive Mechanism In addition, it is considered that the most adequate procedure for the treatment of mental disease is the referral of persons with a mental disease to psychiatric centres and hospitals accountable to the autonomous community healthcare networks. In the case of inmates who, given the high risk of escape or because they pose a risk to themselves or to others, require special security measures, intermediate healthcare devices with security measures should exist 228. The fact is that the scarce alternative resources, the existing difficulties to refer patients to social-healthcare resources and the predominating court admission and release policy means that, in most cases, the judges designate penitentiary psychiatric hospitals and prisons as a place to serve sentence. Accordingly, the authorities involved should propose integrated strategies to enable patients to receive treatment at external resources. 229. Inmates in penitentiary psychiatric hospitals and units should have the status of patients, not of prisoners. Accordingly, such centres should operate as healthcare centres, as regards their organisation, operation, infrastructure and location independent from the penitentiary centre, clinical policies to prevail over regimental policies. The treatment, rehabilitation and care should be similar to that afforded to the rest of the population with a mental disease, although with any necessary security preventions. The current location of penitentiary psychiatric units and hospitals within penitentiary complexes and the facilities themselves nevertheless implies a limitation to their standard use as a social-healthcare institution: isolation of population cores, scarce room space and common areas and yards, insufficient space for the rehabilitation of patients, lack of accessibility, etc. Gardens of the Penitentiary Psychiatric Hospital (HPP) of Seville 86