Whole-Prison Reforms

Words: 3066
Pages: 13

Introduction According to the Equality Act 2010, a mental disability is defined as a mental impairment that has substantial and long-term adverse effects on the ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Clinks is an organisation which supports volunteers in the criminal justice system and has identified three core principles underpinning the whole-prison approach: responding to everyone’s needs, continuity of care throughout the sentence and creating a well-being culture for all. In this essay I will argue that the prison system can better accommodate people with mental disabilities by implementing a whole-prison approach based on the principles of responding to everyone’s needs, continuity of care and creating a wellbeing culture. This will be done by integrating Mad Studies Scholarship and Left Realism to critique the reform proposals. I will also incorporate a tragic case highlighted in a BBC News article, where a prisoner committed suicide the day after being sentenced to five years in prison. This poignant event reinforces the urgency that the current mental health provisions in the prison system need reforming and that the existing measures fail to provide adequate support. …show more content…
Instead of receiving ‘one-for-all’ training which the prison staff receive, the psychologist would have specialised training in identifying both mental disabilities and mental health issues. As leftists favour early intervention for mental health issues, the psychologist should be specialised in creating a tailored treatment plan which would be used throughout the prisoner’s sentence. Even if the prisoners do not explicitly convey their emotions, the psychologist should be able to identify their behaviour and non-verbal cues to properly identify any mental disabilities. This would further lead to mental disabilities being diagnosed more accurately and