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r, as a term, ‘[implies] a marked deviationfrom normality, a clinically recognised set of symptoms or behaviourassociated in most cases with considerable distress and substantialinterference with personal functions or development’ [JointCommissioning Strategy for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Servicesin Kent, Draft Report, 15th January 2007, p6].

Finally, mental illness, the most serious of the three forms ofmental ill-health, can be recognized in those young persons sufferingfrom severe clinical psychosis or neurosis, e.g. those suffering fromschizophrenia.

These definitions provide a clear and useful taxonomy from which wecan begin to analyse the statistics on the prevalence of mentalill-health in young offenders in the UK. However, before we commencethis analysis, it is first important to briefly examine the perceivedhistorical relationship between mental ill-health and crime ; afterall, it has often been the case in the past that societies across theworld have attributed certain (if not all) aspects of criminality tosymptoms of mental ill-health, in particular mental disorder and mentalillness. For example, The USSR during the Cold War often incarceratedpolitical ‘criminals’ on the basis that they must be mentally insanefor holding such opinions and beliefs.

Whilst the above example would shock most people of today, thisphenomenon is not that far removed from how the UK government hastraditionally treated the mentally ill: ‘In the UK, mental health carewas for decades provided only in large ‘asylums’ - keeping ‘mentallyill’ people out of society believing this to be for their own good andthat of their communities. Beginning in the 1950s and accelerating atthe end of the 1980s, government policy switched to providing moreservices in the community and in most cases limiting hospital treatmentto when it is needed most acutely’ [All-Party Parliamentary Group onPrison Health, House of Commons, November 2006, p2].

In light of the fact that historically the mentally ill have beendealt with in the same way as convicted criminals, it is not toodifficult to understand why there has developed a publicly perceivedlink between mental illness and criminality. This misconception hasalso been given weight by a small number of brutal homicide cases inwhich the perpetrator was schizophrenic; whilst social workers andpsychiatrists of today realise that schizophrenia does not necessarilycause its owners to be criminally violent, public opinion is still notas understanding: ‘Our understanding of mental ill health has…developed [since] that time, though public debate on the topic has notalways been in step… the popular assumption that mental ill health andcriminality are inextricably linked needs to be broken and policyinformed by a deeper understanding of the complex links between mentalill health and offending’ [All-Party Parliamentary Group on PrisonHealth, House of Commons, November 2006, p2]. Therefore, whilst theremay be certain links between mental ill-health and criminality, thereis no intuitive similarity between these two respective phenomena.

13] How prevalent is mental ill-health in young offenders who arecurrently serving custodial sentences in young offenders’ institutes inthe UK?

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