When and why should mentally ill prisoners be transferred to secure hospitals: a proposed algorithm

For reasons well known and researched in detail, worldwide prevalence rates for mental disorders are much higher in prison populations than in general, not only for sentenced prisoners but also for prisoners on remand, asylum seekers on warrant for deportation and others. Moreover, the proportion of imprisoned individuals is rising in most countries. Therefore forensic psychiatry must deal not only with the typically young criminal population, vulnerable to mental illness due to social stress and at an age when rates of schizophrenia, suicide, drug abuse and most personality disorders are highest, but also with an increasingly older population with age-related diseases such as dementia. While treatment standards for these mental disorders are largely published and accepted, and scientific evidence as to screening prisoners for mental illness is growing, where to treat them is dependent on considerations for public safety and local conditions such as national legislation, special regulations and the availability of treatment facilities (e.g., in prisons, in special medical wards within prisons or in secure hospitals). While from a medical point of view a mentally ill prisoner should be treated in a hospital, the ultimate decision must consider these different issues. In this article the authors propose an algorithm comprising screening procedures for mental health and a treatment chain for mentally ill prisoners based on treatment facilities in prison, medical safety, human rights, ethics, and the availability of services at this interface between prison and medicine.