Make psychological assessments for new prisoners more rigorous

Rejected 21 signatures

What the petition asks

Rigorous testing needs to be in place specifically for first time offenders or those with a history of mental illness pre-dating the occurrences of criminal behaviour. Either prisons need mandatory psychological input or testing needs to be more thorough.

Far too many mentally ill people who commit crimes are placed in prison where they receive little to no support for their conditions that pre-dated any criminal behaviour. Whilst there is a brief interview that takes place within a prisoners first few days in prison, it is not extensive and lacks the ability to identify whether or not said person should be in a therapeutic environment or a prison.

Why it was rejected

It was not clear what the petition asked the UK Government or Parliament to do.

Petitions need to call on the Government or Parliament to take a specific action.

We understand that you are concerned about existing arrangements for screening new prisoners for mental health issues, but we're not sure exactly what changes you'd like to be made to these arrangements.

We could accept a petition calling for the Government to make changes to the mental health screenings required for new prisoners, but it would need to be clear how you wanted these to be changed from how they work at present.

Timeline

3 Jan 2023	Petition opened for signatures
10 Jan 2023	Rejected by the Petitions Committee

Key facts

Signatures 21

Status Rejected

Rejected 10 Jan 2023

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