Crime In Mind

Crime in Mind – New Project Development Grant Applications are invited to support people who have already completed some early work towards major research development proposals in the field of offender mental health and need to complete further specific work streams on a pathway to a substantive application for major funding or research group consolidation. Up to £5,000 will be offered to successful applicants / applicant groups to support such intermediate work. People from any relevant clinical or non-clinical discipline may apply, but should be able to show explicitly multi-disciplinary and/or multi-agency partners as co-researchers and/or reference group. Consultation or partnership with people with lived experience of using the services should have been considered and if not feasible reasons should be explicit. For more information visit our website at

Our Next Seminar “Enhancing Outcomes for Offenders who have Mental Disorder: Tailoring Community Sentences” will be held on Tuesday 3rd December 2024, 5-7pm. This will be a free virtual event via Zoom. Spaces are limited on a first come basis. To book your space please visit our Ticket Tailor page here - https://lnkd.in/ecccSdku Speakers: Professor Pamela Taylor Mignon French Dr. Clare Bingham Dr. Louise Robinson About this webinar: Some mental disorders put people at higher than average risk of criminal offending. A few people in this position may be sent to hospital. Most are not and it is hard to find optimal services to promote the health and future safety of those not eligible for in-patient treatment. Many get sent to prison, so people with mental disorders are over represented there and suicide and self-harm rates rising. For a substantial number there are safe and effective community alternatives but these are rarely used for people who need specialist psychiatric treatment. Laws in England and Wales and in Scotland allows for people convicted of an offence that could result in a prison sentence not only to have that sentence suspended or to be placed under a community sentence, but also to have those sentences tailored to meet their special needs and risks. Courts may add requirements or conditions to a community sentence – for example placing a restriction on where the person may travel or imposing a curfew. There are three possible treatment requirements – for mental health, for drug rehabilitation or for alcohol treatment. Before any of these three requirements may be added, however, the person concerned must agree to them as must a consultant psychiatrist or psychologist and a probation officer. If all do, then a court may order, in effect, a contract between these parties for a specified period of up to three years. Such arrangements for formal partnerships between probation, health and an offender-patient have been available for several decades, but take up remains low. We will explore model delivery and experience of being under such an arrangement and evidence to date of effectiveness in terms of both criminal justice and clinical outcomes. We will look at a national programme in England that has substantially improved uptake of the arrangement for people who need primary health care in such circumstances. This has improved access at this level but further highlighted the difficulty in giving people who are seriously ill this opportunity for change. We will explore one developing model to support increased uptake of the arrangement for women who need specialist mental health services (secondary health care) across Greater London. Finally we will provide an early view of new research into meeting the needs of the wider range people of people needing secondary mental health services while enhancing community safety and, ultimately reducing health and justice system costs. 

Our next Seminar “Risk and Threat Assessment and Management: Same but Different" will be held on Tue 22 Oct 2024 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM BST Online, Zoom. To register please visit our Ticket Tailor page at https://lnkd.in/eMeuHHk4. Overview: Mental health practitioners have a long history of involvement in clinical risk assessment and management. Indeed, most of the pioneers of today's standard harm prevention practices in forensic mental health care and criminal justice are - were - psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses and social workers. However, mental health practitioners are increasingly being drawn into threat assessment and management work, supporting the endeavours of police and security agencies trying to manage live threats such as active criminal investigations and hostage situations, as well as corporate and public sector agencies trying to understand and prevent evolving threats within and to the working environment. In this presentation, risk and threat assessment and management practice are compared and contrasted, and the role of mental health professionals is described. Case examples will be provided to illustrate what mental health professionals can uniquely bring to the harm prevention task. Speakers: Dr. Frank Farnham Dr. Caroline Logan

Our next Seminar “Approaches to Risk Management of Complex Offenders in Scotland” will be held on Tuesday 9th April 2024, 5-7pm.

Our next Seminar – ‘POLAR: The development of an integrated intervention pathway in prisons‘ will be held on Tuesday 5th March 2024, 3-5pm. This will be a free virtual event via Zoom. Spaces are limited on a first come basis.