- Posted in Police Blog
New coverage
When it comes to looking at police powers within this, there are two bodies of statistics worth knowing about, but both come with difficulties. The NHS England figures which sit behind the Independent’s coverage today; as well as the Home Office statistics are about police powers more generally, but within this sits coverage of police powers under the Mental Health Act. This post is about the obvious questions arising from the coverage within each. The NHS England data 20,000 times in that year. This struck me as especially low, because I recall from previous years, claims of it being over 30,000. For that reason, I checked the last batch of Home Office data 32,000 .
There are various things to be wondered and understood here: the first big one is why the figures are so very different. Obviously, health are reporting figures to NHS Digital for the NHS England publication and police are reporting to the Home Office as part of a mandatory data set. But there’s quite a difference between 20,000 and 32,000! It mostly underscores the warnings on both sets of data about quality and completeness. The police are obliged to add detail to their data: what method of conveyance was used to transport the person from the point of detention; to which kind of location was the person first removed; if it was a health location, what kind; and if it was a police station, for what reason?
Settle in – lots of numbers pending:
UNTANGLING THE NUMBERS
Hard to know detail and I’ve certainly got questions I cannot answer, from reading this. For example, a police station was used 132 times in the reporting period (representing 0.4% of the use of s136 overall. I want to get in to this, but have to say how gratifying it is to see that figure so low, nationally. When I first started working on policing and mental health policy in 2004, all detentions under s136 MHA involved vulnerable people going to custody and that was over 1,000 people a year, just for one police force. The IPCC report in 2008 estimated around 11,500 people a year were going to jail, so 132 is a right success story. But I have questions! –
The Home Office data tells us that of those who went to custody –
39% (51) were arrested for committing an offence – curious about what this means, precisely: if it means someone was detained s136 AND arrested for an alleged offence, then this is something cautioned against in national guidance. The advice is to make a decision … either arrest for the alleged offence OR use s136, but use of both becomes complicated, practically and legally. If it doesn’t mean this, what does it mean?!29% (38) were because conditions in Regulations were met – I’m surprised at this figure. If 38 inspectors in England and Wales thought they were dealing with someone “at imminent risk of serious injury or death” (the first of three criteria to be satisfied in the regs) and despite this they authorised use of a police station, then I can only recommend they re-read a post I did about why I would never authorise it My own experience giving expert witness evidence in a number of death in police custody inquests reinforces my view on this and I’d hate to see that inspector go through what other officers have, around such decisions. The inspector would be especially vulnerable because most usually, they wouldn’t have been present to see the person whose removal they were authorising. I can also speak to this from practical experience, having been a duty inspector in relevant incident where notwithstanding satisfaction of criteria, the officers went to the Emergency Department.
32% (42) were for another reason – it intrigues me to wonder what on EARTH this actually means! If someone under s136 was removed to a police without the Regulations being satisfied, that rather suggests removal was unlawful … doesn’t it?! — had they also been under arrest for an offence, they would feature under the first bullet point. So what on on earth does this category mean? … I admit I’m at a loss, so all suggestions welcome. I can only guess this may be to do with record-keeping, but I’d be interested in knowing the detail.WHICH PLACE OF SAFETY
Where the power is used, 76% of those remove to a health-setting were taken to a specific Place of Safety (usually in a mental health unit) and which is set up for reception of those of us detained under ss135/136 MHA. 18% were removed to an Emergency Department and that leaves 6% unexplained. Some of the 6% (132 of them) will be those removed to police custody, but that’s only 0.4%. It seems for +5% of people, we just don’t know – assuming I’ve understood the numbers correctly. Worth noting at this point: both NHS England and Home Office data sets have warnings about incomplete numbers and data quality problems.
The Emergency Department numbers are worth thinking about: removal to an acute hospital ED may follow because someone is injured or additionally, acutely unwell at the point of detention. Perhaps they are thought to have taken an overdose, or require treatment for physical injuries. But we also know that ED comes in to play when a health-based Place of Safety is not available. I often see incident logs where people are in ED purely because there is insufficient capacity in a mental health setting, to accommodate someone. Sometimes this is because of high numbers of s136 detentions occurring at the same time, otherwise because the Place of Safety is out of play for other reasons. Some Places of Safety are used as “swing beds” for s2 or s3 patients where no ‘proper’ inpatient beds exists after they are first ‘sectioned’.
The police service is also required to report on it’s transportation mechanism –
In 12% of cases, method of transport was not known at all.
Of those that were known, 52% was ambulance.
44% was police vehicle.
4% was none – becasue the person was detained at a location at which they were kept.
Of the reasons for using a police vehicle –
20% of use was not justified
42% was a risk-based decision about the person’s behaviour.
29% was no ambulance available within a reasonable timeframe
26% was police not requesting an ambulance – not requested in one quarter of all cases!
There’s your whistle-stop tour of the data – the documents are worth reading, but remember the caveats about quality and content. There are a lot of unanswered and curious questions arising, as ever. We can’t really understand detail sufficiently, from these data sets.
Winner of the President’s Medal , the Royal College of Psychiatrists .
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All views expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
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