Prison mental health services are underfunded, report says

Mental health services in prisons in England are getting only a third of the money they need to achieve the government’s goal of providing a service equivalent to that offered in the community. This is the central finding of a report from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

The report finds that none of England’s regions are offering a service adequate to meet prisoners’ mental healthcare needs. Prison “inreach” teams, designed to be equivalent to community based mental health teams, are performing “very little face-to-face therapeutic activity,” and they often find it difficult to secure continuity of care for prisoners once they …