'Offenders, Deviants or Patients' - Comments on Part Two of the White Paper

Abstract

The Government White Paper Reforming the Mental Health Act follows closely on the heels of the Green Paper - Reform of the Mental Health Act, 1983 which derives from (but also departs from in many respects) the Report of the Expert Committee chaired by Professor Genevra Richardson. One could say, with some justification, that mental health professionals have been 'deluged' with paper in this area in the past year or two, so that trying to discern trends has become very difficult. In particular, the material in the White Paper is somewhat closely written and needs to be read with a good deal of care (or, so it seemed to me). To complicate matters further, offender-patients are also discussed in Part I of the White Paper (The Legal Framework) whereas it would have been more logical to have dealt with the proposed provisions for them in Part II. For clarity, I propose to deal with all these matters under one heading.