Women Admitted to Medium Secure Care: Their Admission Characteristics and Outcome as Compared with Men

Abstract

Background: Whilst women admitted to secure care are believed to require gender-specific services, there is limited research to inform their provision. Method: Clinical and forensic characteristics and outcomes on 93 women were obtained from multiple data sources and compared with 502 men admitted to the same medium secure unit over a 20-year period. Results: Compared to the men, the women were more likely to have more mental health needs and less criminality. At discharge, women were more likely to be transferred to secure care and less likely to be transferred to prison. Following discharge, the women had a higher rate of mortality. While reconviction rates were similar for the two groups for serious offenses, violent or arson incidents not leading to conviction were more likely for women. The women were more likely to be readmitted, and to be readmitted to high secure care. Conclusion: Despite more favorable criminological characteristics at baseline, our data suggest a poorer outcome for women overall following discharge.

A mixed-methods study exploring the characteristics and needs of long-stay patients in high and medium secure settings in England: implications for service organisation

“…Notably, however, their longer-term outcomes seem to be worse. 104 We did not find any difference between long-stay patients and non-long-stay patients in terms of gender or ethnicity; the higher percentage of white ethnic class in long-stay patients in the medium secure setting failed to reach statistical significance. As expected, long-stay patients were older than non-long-stay patients in both high and medium secure care.…”

The Characteristics and Course After Discharge of Mentally Disordered Homicide and Non-Homicide Offenders

“…The lack of a difference between the homicide group and the non-homicide matched control for overall mortality and cause of death is striking as is the high number of suicides among the matched controls. This pattern reflects the very high standardized mortality rate in the series of patients, which was 6 times that expected in the general population (Davies et al, 2007) with a twelvefold increase in women (Sahota et al, 2010).…”

Long-Term Suicide Risk in Forensic Psychiatric Patients

“…Five men were convicted of a homicide while in the community. Sex differences in this cohort are described elsewhere (Clarke, 2007;Sahota, Davies, Clarke et al, 2010).…”

“…However, there was no difference in length of stay between those who committed suicide and those who did not. Other differences between men and women both in admission and outcome characteristics (e.g., women were more likely to be readmitted to a psychiatric hospital) are examined elsewhere (Clarke, 2007;Sahota, Davies, Clarke et al, 2010).…”