There are a few blogs in my ‘drafts’ folder, which I’ve resisted publishing because they relate to frustrations I had with my former employer’s approach to mental health policy and practice in policing. The topic for this post is one on which I’d started drafting thoughts a couple of times but only after today did I feel it was appropriate to wheel them out. I suspect today’s quite extraordinary public intervention by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HIMP) issuing a very public ticking off to West Midlands Police, makes it entirely justified.
I’m quite unaware of HMIP issuing such a public rebuke to one particular police force over an issue which they are also at pains to point out is not a problem they see elsewhere in England or Wales – tell me if you know otherwise. They would normally report in private to the police force or via the police inspectorate, yet here the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, has put his name to a press release offering very direct criticism of West Midlands Police for a policy which is known, at least internally to them, as “the Red Route”. He has written to three Secretaries of State in the UK Government about his concerns.
Astonishing, frankly.
A TRAFFIC LIGHT SYSTEM
The “red route” is not a phrase used in HMIP’s press release – it’s just one part of the formal custody policy we’re talking about here. It’s a traffic light system where the custody process assigns a ‘green’, ‘amber’ or ‘red’ route to each of us arrested and thought mentally ill, predicated on an overview of the gravity of the offence, the evidence and the risk.
The concern for HMIP therefore is:
West Midlands Police arresting people for alleged serious offences and some of them, acutely and / or seriously mentally ill, are deliberately not being assessed in custody under the Mental Health Act or at court, according to HMIP’s letter, despite being known to be potentially unwell and in need of hospital admission. Instead, the ‘red route’ requires prosecution to court for the relevant offences and the courts being asked to remand the person to prison, probably because they end up with little other option, without inflicting serious risks on the person or the public. More on that in a moment.
Local prisons and inspectors then report extremely disinhibited and disruptive, distressing behaviours – see their press release for details (linked above) and obviously questions about why people were not assessed and considered for ‘diversion’. As West Midlands Police covers areas other than Birmingham, there will presumably be more than the nine people each month, including some more from Coventry, Wolverhampton and everywhere else. In so many metrics, Birmingham used to account for 50-60% of various things in WMP so I would estimate up to 15 people a month across various prisons.
WHAT IS BACKGROUND TO THE RED ROUTE?
This was all being introduced as I left the organisation in 2024 and I have no direct knowledge or experience of it – important I make that clear.
That said, I have been contacted directly and informally by a number of WMP officers to ask questions about all this. Firstly, in order for them to understand what might be the aim of such processes, to the extent they could explain it all; but secondly to raise valid questions about the ethics, legality and safety of it all – questions they say they could not get clear answers to from the force itself.
This red route is for crimes of violence, weapons or sexual offences and where the initial risk assessment suggests, no matter the seriousness of someone’s mental health, the evidence and gravity of the offending will make it likely a prosecution will follow at some point, so why not just get on with things? In the interests of balance, it’s fair to say this description is not one from West Midlands Police, but based on the officers who contacted me, the non-police professionals in the West Midlands who have asked me what I know about this during CPD events I have delivered in the last year and from what I can glean publicly. If WMP want to correct the record about what it is and how it works, I admit I’d love to learn more.
WIDER BACKGROUND
There is a bigger background to HMIP’s concerns today. They haven’t just suddenly seen something and then immediately written to government.
- Timeline of concerns –
- An unannounced inspection of HMP Birmingham took place in October 2025, lasting ten days – the inspection team included experienced prison and healthcare inspectors.
- In their report of January 2026, they flagged the problems of seriously and acutely mentally ill men arriving in prison without mental health assessment at the police or court stages, directly attributing this to local police policy which unilaterally decided not to ensure assessment and diversion in appropriate cases.
- The inspectors were told this was due to police policy and they listed it as a ‘priority concern’ on page 5 of their report.
- On 3rd August 2026, HMIP produced a progress report on HMP Birmingham, highlighting once again the concerns they had about mentally ill men arriving in prison without mental health assessment at either the police or court stages, to potentially divert them to more suitable environments. Nothing had changed, they said.
- On 5th August, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, wrote to three secretaries of state (Home, Health and Justice) stating his inspectors were told this police policy –
“… was due to was due to a change in practice associated with local implementation of the Right Care, Right Person national partnership agreement between the Home Office, Department of Health and Social Care, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, and NHS England”.
Now first things first, we need to put this to bed –
Nothing about the issue of prosecuting or diverting mentally disordered offenders is anything whatsoever to do with Right Care, Right Person. It’s unmentioned in the National Partnership Agreemement referenced by Mr Taylor and it’s nothing whatsoever to do with any aspect of RCRP in anything I’ve ever read or heard in the years I’ve now been studying it. Somebody’s making things up as they go, perhaps because they’re now questioned to explain the impacts of their various ideas.
And we know that’s true, because HMIP stress they don’t see this anywhere else, despite RCRP being a programme which has rolled out (without any evaluation whatsoever) across England and Wales.
IMPACT
The letter to the UK Government states –
“The result was that in the 8 weeks prior to inspection, 12 acutely mentally unwell men had been remanded into custody, with devastating consequences. Several had acute undiagnosed and/or untreated mental disorders including psychosis, leading to disinhibited behaviour such as walking naked around wings and smearing faeces. The healthcare in-patient unit at HMP Birmingham was often full and so some of these individuals were housed on the main residential wings. It was clear that other prisoners were distressed at having to live alongside such mentally unwell men and that prison officers, who are not trained mental health workers, were unable to provide adequate care. “
Now, in fairness to the police, they will probably point out their prosecution recommendations to the Crown Prosecution Service are exactly that: recommendations which then have to be authorised by lawyers from the CPS and the concerns of HMIP relate to people where the CPS have taken a professional view there is evidence to charge with a more serious offence and that it was in the public interest to do so.
If West Midlands Police eventually give any kind of press response on this point, given the story is gaining a little momentum on social media and attracting the attention of national criminal justice charities like the Prison Reform Trust and the Howard League, we can see if that’s a line they adopt. It’s not an unfair point – but the obvious retort to it is to point out the pitfalls of immediate prosecution for those of us who are seriously mentally ill. There can be significant benefits to a delayed decision to prosecute –
- Immediate prosecution of seriously mental ill offenders means they are highly likely to end up in prison where the MHA cannot be relied upon to provide treatment or care.
- Immediate prosecution means you immediately hit up against unfitness to plead considerations which complicate and often delay the criminal justice process.
The police might also reasonably point out that if someone is under arrest for an offence and if the evidence exists to prosecute them and it is in the public interest to do so, one thing preventing diversion from custody and prosecution at a later time might be the lack of appropriate mental health beds into which people can be diverted in a timely way. If timely diversion cannot occur without the police bumping in to protracted, unlawful detention whilst beds are sought, then prosecution where diversion is not possible, may be fair comment.
I’ve said countless times, upstream intervention from NHS commissioners may alleviate difficulties ensuring diversion. But none of this is the argument I’m told was given to police officers about why this policy was introduced so we again would have to wait for a press release to see what it says is going on here.
SECTION 136 AT COURT
Not mentioned by HMIP, perhaps because they don’t know this part of it, is the practice of West Midlands Police sending two 999 response officers to court for every person subject to this policy approach. This is to enable those officers to consider (or, by implication of having being sent there, to use) section 136 MHA in situations where the Magistrates fail to remand someone in to custody.
It is worth just thinking through what that all means.
- If someone in custody is not afforded a Mental Health Act assessment, but prosecuted instead without regard to their need for admission, treatment and care, what does it say if s136 is then used after the policy’s intention fails?
- Section 136 can only be used if someone is “in immediate need of care or control” and by sending officers to court to use this power, in the event of a remand failure, shows something about the assessment of risk, if a person were to be released by the court.
- Sending officers to court as a contingency reinforced the obvious question of why the person was not assessed earlier.
Accepting we are yet to hear West Midlands Police’s own explanation of this policy and their reaction to HMIP’s rather extraordinary raising of concerns, there may be aspects to this we do not know and which would explain it. But my list of questions is long and my experience is, West Midlands Police don’t explain things clearly when they explain policy and practice, and not just on mental health – that much is clear by suggestion this ‘red route’ thing follows on from RCRP, which is at best, confused and at worst, demonstrably fallacious.
Ultimately, HMIP’s intervention should now prompt urgent review of the policy where obvious legal questions arise about PACE, the MHA, diversion and equality. If the force has a justification, they should state it clearly and publicly. If not, the practice should stop because the consequences for vulnerable people and for the integrity of the criminal justice system are on open display. HMIP’s findings are not minor operational issues – they describe systemic failures with profound human consequences.
Awarded the President’s Medal, by
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, 2026
I am not a police officer.
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 