§ Mr. George HowarthTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) remand and (b) convicted but not sentenced (i) men and (ii) women were received into the prison system during 1994 and 1995 with identified mental health problems, broken down by age. [25199]
§ Miss WiddecombeResponsibility for this matter has been delegated to the director general of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. George Howarth, dated 18 April 1996:
The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the number and ages of unsentenced men and women received into the prison system during 1994 and 1995 with identified mental health problems.This information is not available in the form requested. However, researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry recently undertook for the Prison Service a study aimed principally at measuring the prevalence of mental disorder amongst the remand population in England and Wales. They considered that 66 per cent of the adult males, 53 per cent of the young men and 77 per cent of the women in a large and broadly representative sample could be diagnosed as suffering from some form of mental disorder, a term which includes in this context harmful or dependent substance misuse.