Criminal Justice Diversion and Liaison Services: A Path to Success?

Abstract

The original aim of these services appeared straightforward: 'that mentally disordered offenders needing care and treatment should receive it from the health and personal social services rather than in custodial care' (Department of Health and Home Office, 1992: 7). However, this was not a simple or straightforward area. Service users could include those with mental illness, learning disability, personality disorder, substance misuse and more vague 'mental health problems'. Individual clients could be acutely ill (no previous psychiatric history), chronically ill (have a history of illness) or severely ill (come under the Mental Health Act 1983, now 2007). They could also be non-offenders (at risk of offending), alleged offenders (not convicted) or convicted offenders. Consequently, the practice of diversion services developed so that it could include diversion away from the criminal justice system (that is, not prosecuted but rather responded to differently), diversion away from custody (that is, finding a non-penal disposal) or diversion to services which would best meet need without necessarily requiring diversion from prosecution or even custody (that is, as a way of surfacing need and accessing services) (James, 1996; National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, 1993;Joseph, 1991).Diversion services and their client group were negotiating a complex multi-agency offender health pathway -different people were being 'processed' in different ways with different outcomes. Failure to understand or support this complexity and the concomitant need for a patient-centred approach to the development of a coordinated pathway Wendy Dyer has meant that professional interests (competition both within services and between agencies in terms of for example philosophical approaches, governance issues, budget and resources and priorities) in planning services have dominated. As a result, the fortunes of many CJLDS have waned -many services no longer exist and others are no longer recognisable as diversion services. The question is are we any more likely to witness the development of 'successful, sustainable' client-centred services the second time round? This article will examine the difficulties that occurred with the first wave of diversion services and consider the likelihood that the second wave will prove to be more successful. Background -the first wave

Mental Health Street Triage

“…Pre-arrest 'diversion' was recognised as an option by police officers -there may be no indication for arrest, and they did not want to arrest individuals unnecessarily -but gaps in health services could result in inappropriate detention in police cells, reminiscent of the so-called 'mercy booking' reported in the USA (Watson et al, 2008). Many services are already in place across the UK providing health expertise into the criminal justice system, but these have been piecemeal and tend to focus on events after the individual has been detained (Dyer, 2013).…”

‘Enhanced Support for High Intensity Users of the Criminal Justice System’: An Evaluation of Mental Health Nurse Input into Integrated Offender Management Services in the North East of England

“…The challenges facing the NE IOM-MH service are not new. In particular, the issue around wider mental health service cooperation ‒ the ‘diversion to what?’ question ‒ has been well documented, but is yet to be resolved (James, 2010; Dyer, 2012; Scott et al ., 2013; Fengea et al ., 2014). Despite these challenges, overall findings described a very positive picture.…”

Prison Health Discharge Planning – Evidence of an Integrated Care Pathway or the End of the Road?

“…However, evidence (both from this project and wider research, for example Williams, 2009;Lennox et al, 2010Lennox et al, , 2012 points to the contrary, organisations continue to work in silos; or where there is evidence of inter-agency working, episodes of care during contact with the criminal justice system are themselves treated as silos with minimal if any links with the next part of the pathway. For example, the provision of healthcare at police stations, issues around custody diversion and support for offenders with mental health problems at court and prison healthcare are in the main treated as discrete periods within which care must be provided, issues considered and problems resolved, but between which there are few links made (Peay, 2007(Peay, , 2010Dyer, 2012).…”

“…However, issues around prisoner health are substantial, and every stage of the offender health pathway is problematic as prisoners tend to go from a state of poor health in the community, to limited and patchy custody diversion schemes (Dyer, 2012), to limited healthcare in prisons, to problematic prison discharge planning, and finally to poor health when released back into the community.…”