The Home Office has today published the latest data on various police powers, which includes use of s136 Mental Health Act 1983. You can access the full data for yourself, but for the purpose of making a few headline points about what I’ve just read, I’ve highlighted a few forces below and covered certain aspects of it all. There is much more to be interested in around age, sex and race of those detained so if you want to see that, you can access the full spreadsheet on the Home Office website. There is also plenty we need to know more about to properly understand what’s going on and why certain facets of this differ so wildly around the country.
This new data relates to the period, 010422 to 310323 and was published yesterday. If you want to then compare it to the previous year’s data, it is still on the Home Office website as well.
Here is a sample of what it contains, and then some headlines and thoughts for you –
HEADLINES
- Use of section 136 MHA is reported to have dropped, nationally – from 36,621 in 2021/22 to 34,685 in 2022/23, a roughly 5% reduction.
- Some forces have seen an increase, like West Midlands Police up by 16% and Humberside up by 15%.
- Avon and Somerset’s use fell by about as much as the national fall.
- Emergency Departments are the first-choice Place of Safety 35% of the time – see below.
- Ambulances are used to convey patients far less often than police cars are – and most of the time that is the case, it because no ambulance is available to attend within 30-minutes.
- But it’s also true that officers are not calling ambulances thousands of times a year. << Stop that before someone dies: call every time and it’s then for the ambulance service to explain their response. No problem cracking on if their response time will be significant – but make sure you’ve called before deciding to do so!
- Conveyance by a non-police vehicle is a requirement of the Code of Practice MHA in both England and Wales.
- Data doesn’t make clear whether conveyance by police vehicle due to risk includes paramedics being involved in the transfer but use of a police vehicle, or whether paramedics are not involved at all – I fear it will be the latter.
- Police custody is used as a Place of Safety over 300 times and about half of that is West Midlands Police where the person is “arrested for a substantive offence”.
- It’s thought the statutory regulations for use of a police stations were satisfied 67 times and Greater Manchester Police accounted for 55 of those.
- There are 40 occasions where the reason for a police station is “other” or “not known”.
- Use of police custody is rising, but this is largely explained by the increased use of 136 and of police stations in the West Midlands.
MY OWN THOUGHTS
There’s a lot going on here! … and you can read about Mind’s response to these statistics as well, where they are asking questions relative to RCRP.
The alarming part of this for me is how often officers nationally don’t seem to be calling ambulances and how well West Midlands Ambulance Service seem to be able to respond to the four midlands forces compared to other ambulance services. It terrifies me to think how often inspectors seem to be authorising the use of police stations as a Place of Safety. I wrote in 2017 when the law was changed that I would never be prepared to authorise it – the whole point of those Regulations is that they were intended to allow the police to deny access to the most inappropriate environment to those least appropriate to be there.
Inspectors in Greater Manchester Police might be interested in wondering why other thousands of inspectors across 42 other forces felt the Regulations were satisfied just twelve times in the year, but a couple of hundred inspectors in just one force thought they were satisfied fifty-five times in the same year? If someone really is at “imminent risk of serious injury or death”, do we really want them in a cell?! Even if we’re happy the risk is to others, not the person, it must also be satisfied that no Place of Safety in the force area can manage the person. So why not just ensure that officers remain with the person at the PoS to manage any ongoing risk? — then it can’t be argued the PoS is “unable to manage the person” and boom: legal criteria for authorisation not met and the person will be closer to medical oversight whilst detained in that condition.
If someone meets the criteria for detention, you also have to wonder about Acute Behavioural Disturbance or other medical conditions which could be placing them at risk.
National guidance is that ambulances should still be called even where risk is raised to a point where transfer in an ambulance would be unsafe. Paramedics can travel in a police and you will almost certainly still be going to a healthcare location. Inquests have focussed on the lack of medical supervision of detainees during transfer and you may remember the death of Leon Briggs in 2013, which led to eight years of investigations, reviews and inquests. In that case, paramedics were at the scene with the officers who detained Leon but when he was place in a police van, the paramedics drove the other way and didn’t travel with him. Neglect findings against Bedfordshire Police and East of England ambulance service arising from the inquest.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Finally, I really feel for my colleagues in Emergency Departments – they are being used as a Place of Safety in the first instance over 35% of the time. It would be interesting if the Home Office expanded the data set so that reasons for using ED were given. I suspect, the vast majority of the time, there is no medical justification for being in ED specifically, but that it’s mostly due to the non-availability of a health-based Place of Safety in a mental health setting. In forces I’m more familiar with, the PoS provision in mental health units is the same or less than it was fifteen years ago – but use of the power has gone up by over 10,000 and police stations have been taken out of the equation for most circumstances, despite the best efforts of some to keep using them.
This shows there have been obvious knock-on consequences from the 2017 Regulations and that we still have problems ensuring effective use of the power, effective conveyance to the first location and all of that is prior to the problems faced by our AMHP colleagues in convening assessments an then ensuring beds for those of us who require admission under the MHA. There is much still to understand about the power and the most frustrating thing is, it’s knowable from untoward events in the past from which I submit we should have learned lessons by now.
Lots to understand and discuss – I can only hope people are going to.
Winner of the President’s Medal, the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation. (c) Michael Brown, 2024
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 