If I went back to jail, I would refuse to share a prison cell

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/24/prison-cell-mental-health-problem-risk

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When I was doing time, I got on well with the vast majority of my fellow prisoners; we were all in the same boat and there is strength in unity. Even when forced to share a cell, I made the best of sharing a space designed for one with a stranger for up to 23 hours a day.

However, in the unlikely event of my being imprisoned again, I would refuse point blank to enter a shared cell.

Why? Statistically, it would be more likely than not that the person I was being asked to share with, would have significant mental health problems. In some cases, dangerously so.

In March 2000, at Feltham Young Offenders Institution, 19-year-old Zahid Mubarek, was murdered by his cellmate, who had a severe personality disorder. Of the 18 resolved prison homicides since then, over half were committed in shared cells, by people suffering severe mental health problems who should not have been confined with anyone.

My mind has focused on this issue for the last 18 months, as I've been sitting on a commission set up to examine what has changed on mental health in the criminal justice system (CJS) since the Bradley report five years ago. Headed by labour peer, Keith Bradley, it found offenders with mental health problems were failed by policing, courts and prisons and made 82 recommendations.

The review of the progress made is again headed by Lord Bradley. It has heard evidence from a wide range of experts working in the field, along with people who had been through the system, and produced a new report. In a nutshell: there are distinct signs of improvement in some areas since 2009, with evidence of effective early interventions to prevent children from entering the CJS. Six pilot programmes, aimed at diverting young people with behavioural problems away from the CJS, were successfully completed in 2010/11 and a national operating model is being embedded. There are, however, fears that the national programme has an adult bias and needs more people with an understanding of young people's needs. And there is always the danger of funding cuts. But it is progress.

And some police forces, Leicestershire and the Met in particular, are showing significant improvement in their handling of people with mental health problems. Police minister Damian Green backed moves earlier this year to place mental health nurses in 50 police stations across the UK, as part of the liaison programme recommended by Bradley. The aim is to roll this out nationally, with the NHS taking over when contracts expire.

But in my area of expertise, prisons, there is no such positivity. The mental health situation in jails is worse than ever. Apart from the increase in prison murders and self-harm among male prisoners, my intray bulges with horror stories. A snapshot: an inmate in Dovegate prison, in Staffordshire, was told the only way to guarantee being seen by a mental health nurse was to self-harm. So he did.

And in 2011, a prisoner in the close supervision centre at Woodhill jail, in Buckinghamshire, sliced both ears off in two separate incidents. The man is still being held in a segregation unit, instead of a secure mental health bed. There is an acute shortage of such beds. Only three hospitals, Broadmoor, Rampton and Ashworth take high-risk people from prison. Patients don't leave these places in a hurry; so dozens of prisoners with severe mental health problems are held instead in segregation units, treated as control problems rather than the seriously ill people they are.

The prison service has to take those the courts send them, irrespective of their mental state. But this mistreatment of prisoners with mental health problems should shame us all. Politicians and senior managers must admit the problem and deal with it.