Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:19:48.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regional Secure Units: The Creation of a Policy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

David M. Torpy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the historical context of the policy decision of the (then) DHSS in July 1974 to establish Regional Secure Units with an initial provision for 1,000 places. A brief examination of the history of the detention of the criminally insane and the setting up of the county asylums is followed by an examination of the various problems faced by the authorities concerned with the care of the criminally insane and the mentally ill in general in the 1960s. The paper examines the different streams of influence and power that converged upon this solution: government, special hospitals, public inquiries, unlocking of hospital wards, criminal law, DHSS and the Home Office, judges, voluntary bodies, prisons, psychiatrists and the official government reports known as the Glancy and the Butler Reports. The paper seeks to explain the policy decision to build regional secure units as a dynamic outcome arising from the confluence of opportunities, participants and solutions: a policy formation model put forward by March and Olsen (1976).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 549 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allderidge, P. (1979), ‘Hospitals, madhouses and asylums: cycles in the care of the insane’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 34, 321–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayers, G.M. (1971), England's First State Hospitals and the Metropolitan Asylums Board 1867–1930, Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, London.Google Scholar
Bluglass, R. (1978), ‘RSUs and interim security for psychiatric patients’, British Medical Journal, 1: 6111, 489–93 (paper delivered to the House of Commons, January 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bluglass, R. (1988), ‘Mentally disordered prisoners: reports but no improvements’, British Medical Journal, 296, 1757.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bullard, H. and Bond, M. (1988), ‘Secure units: why they are needed’, Medicine Science and the Law, 28: 4, 312–318.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, M.D., March, J.G. and Olsen, J.P. (1972), ‘A garbage can model of organisational choice’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 03 1972, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Commissioners of Prisons (1958), Report for 1957, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Cyert, R.M. and March, J.G. (1963), A Behavioural Theory of the Firm, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Dell, S. (1980), The Transfer of Special Hospital Patients to the NHS Hospitals, Special Hospitals Research Unit Report No. 16, London.Google Scholar
DHSS (1971), Hospital Services for the Mentally III, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
DHSS (1973), Security in NHS Psychiatric Hospitals, ECD 168/73, DHSS, London.Google Scholar
DHSS (1974), Revised Report of the Working Party on Security in NHS Hospitals, (Glancy Report), unpublished.Google Scholar
DHSS (1975), Health and Personal Social Services Statistics for England, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
DHSS (1975), Future Management of the Special Hospitals, unpublished internal departmental document.Google Scholar
DHSS (1976), Health and Personal Services Statistics for England 1975, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Faulk, M. and Taylor, J.C. (1986), ‘Psychiatric interim regional secure unit: seven years' experience’, Medicine Science and the Law, 26: 1, 17–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gostin, L. (ed.) (1985), Secure Provision, Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Gunn, J. (1985), ‘Psychiatry and the prison medical service’, in Gostin, L. (ed.), Secure Provision, Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Hamilton, J.R. (1985), ‘The special hospitals’, in Gostin, L. (ed.), Secure Provision, Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Hellman, L. (1988), ‘An open and closed case: SETRHA medium secure units’, Airchitects Journal, 8, 36–54.Google Scholar
Home Office (1964), Report of the Working Party on the Organisation of the Prison Medical Service, HMSO. London.Google Scholar
Home Office (1966), Report of the Inquiry into Prison Escapes and Security, Cmnd 3175 (Mountbatten Report), HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Home Office, Scottish Home and Health Department, and Northern Ireland Office (1979), Committee of Inquiry into the United Kingdom Prison Services Report (May Report), Cmnd 7673, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Home Office and DHSS (1974), Interim Report of the Committee on Mentally Abnormal Offenders, Cmnd 5698, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Home Office and DHSS (1975), Report of the Committee on Mentally Abnormal Offenders (Butler Report), Cmnd 6244, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
House of Commons (1968), Second Report from the Estimates Committee, The Special Hospitals and the State Hospital, Session 1967–68, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
House of Commons (1978), Fifteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1977–78. The Reduction of Pressure on the Penal System, Volume 1 Report, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Hyde, A. (1986), ‘Secure units: the yawning gap between prison and the open door’. The Health Service Journal, 30.10.86.Google Scholar
Kushlick, A. et al. (1975), ‘Secure hospital units’, British Medical Journal, 205–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maier, G.J. and Miller, R.D. (1987), ‘Models of mental health service delivery to correctional institutions’, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 32: 1, 225–232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
March, J.G. and Olsen, J.P. (1976), Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations, Universitetforlaget, Bergen, Norway.Google Scholar
Ministry of Health (1961), Special Hospitals: Report of the Working Party, HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Munro, M.A. and Fraser, K.A. (1988), ‘New provision for mentally disordered offenders: the use of sections 35, 36 and 38 in two regional secure units’, Medicine Science and the Law, 28: 3, 227–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NHS Hospital Advisory Service (1975), Report on Broadmoor Hospital, unpublished.Google Scholar
Parker, E. (1985), ‘The development of secure provision’, in Gostin, L. (ed.), Secure Provision, Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Rollin, H.R. (1963), ‘Social and legal repercussions of the Mental Health Act 1959’, British Medical Journal, 1, 786–788.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rollin, H.R. (1966), ‘Mental hospitals without bars: a contemporary paradox’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 59, 701–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, P.D. (1974), ‘Solutions to the problem of the dangerous offender’, British Medical Journal, 4, 640–641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snowden, P.R. (1987), ‘Regional secure units: arriving but under threat’, British Medical Journal, 294, 1310–1311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tidmarsh, D. (1980), ‘Trends in length of stay at Broadmoor’, Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 4, 135–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weller, M. and Weller, B. (1988), ‘Crime and mental illness’, Medicine Science and the Law, 28: 1, 38–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed