Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners in (a) England and (b) England and Wales were transferred to a bed in an NHS mental health facility because they had (i) psychosis, (ii) schizophrenia or (iii) any other condition in each of the last five years.

The total number of prisoners who have been transferred to hospital under sections 47 or 48 of the Mental Health Act 1983 in each of the last four years is set out below. The Ministry of Justice does not record the patients’ diagnoses:

The data are published annually on the gov.uk website under the Offender Management Statistics. The latest published data are up to December 2017. The figures for 2018 are currently subject t to the appropriate checks and validation before eventual publication later this year.

It is not possible to provide a breakdown of these figures by geographical area; this information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The (a) average, (b) highest and (c) lowest number of weeks, which have passed between the Ministry of Justice receiving an application for transfer of a prisoner and the prisoner’s eventual admission to hospital, is set out in the tables below.

The time has been measured from the date at which the Ministry of Justice receives an application for transfer to the actual date of admission to hospital. It should be noted that two medical reports recommending transfer are required in each case and a bed must be available before the prisoner can transfer. In some instances, the Ministry of Justice will receive an incomplete application and so some of the time between receipt and admission will be spent awaiting both required medical reports, or other essential information.

The Ministry of Justice has a target of 24 hours within which to provide a transfer warrant, once the assessments are complete and the two required medical reports and all other relevant information is received. This target is met in 95% of cases.

Information on the length of time between the initial medical recommendation and the prisoner’s admission to hospital is not available in the format requested.

Information is collected on the number of transfers, not the number of individual prisoners who are transferred. An individual prisoner may undergo more than one transfer in any given time period.

This average time information is not published. The measure has been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

We take the mental health of prisoners extremely seriously, which is why we have increased the support available to vulnerable offenders - especially during the first 24 hours in custody - and invested more in mental health awareness training for prison officers.

But we recognise that more can be done and continue to work in partnership with HMPPS, DHSC, NHS England and Public Health England to improve the mental health of offenders at all points of the criminal justice system.