Section one Context Mental health detention The UK government published a ‘Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat’ in February 2014. This policy initiative was designed to improve outcomes for people experiencing mental health crisis in England – some of whom end up in detention – and contained commitments to drive multi-agency improvements in meeting their needs. Signatories include the Association of Chief Police officers (ACPO), the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, British Transport Police, the College of Policing and the Home Office as well as key health and social care agencies. liberty should be authorised and supervised in hospitals, care homes and community settings where it is possible that rights under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights would otherwise be infringed. The Scottish Law Commission is reviewing Scottish safeguards and will report in 2014.19 Women in detention In July 2013, the UK Parliament’s Justice Select Committee issued a report of its inquiry into women offenders, assessing progress five years after Baroness Corston’s groundbreaking review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system.20 The Committee noted there was On 13 March 2014 a House of Lords general agreement that the majority of committee, set up to scrutinise how the women offenders pose little risk to public Mental Capacity Act 2005 was working safety and that imprisonment is frequently in practice, concluded that there was a an ineffective response, as well as broad widespread lack of understanding and recognition that the specific needs of awareness of the Act, and that deprivation of women offenders are often neglected in liberty safeguards, which had been added to a system designed for a majority of male the Act in 2007, were not fit for purpose, and offenders. Furthermore, the Committee needed to be reviewed with a view to being found that the women’s prison population replaced. On 19 March 2014, the Supreme had not fallen sufficiently fast and urged the Court handed down its judgment in the cases gradual reconfiguration of the female estate of P v Cheshire West and Chester Council and with the sort of smaller units and more another and P and Q v Surrey County Council. responsive regimes that Baroness Corston The Supreme Court ruling expanded the recommended. HMI Prisons gave evidence understanding of the definition of ‘deprivation to the Justice Select Committee inquiry of liberty’, and as a result has brought to light and sat as an observer to the Ministerial an increasing number of people who are Advisory Board on Female Offenders, recognised as deprived of their liberty, not established to support the implementation only in care homes and hospitals but also in of the government’s new strategy for community-based settings such as supported women prisoners. NPM members have seen living. In the light of these developments, evidence of some positive responses to the the Law Commission (England and Wales) concerns the Committee addressed. has begun to review how deprivation of 19 For more information, see http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/mental-capacityact-2005/news/, http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/areas/capacity-and-detention.htm and http://www.scotlawcom.gov. uk/law-reform-projects/adults-with-incapacity/ 20 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmjust/92/9202.htm 15