Professor Brendan Kelly:

The point the Senator made about people with mental illness in prison is very well taken. In every country where the number of psychiatry inpatients falls, as it has in Ireland over the past few decades, we have seen that the number of people with mental illness in prisons tends to increase. The national forensic mental health service does its very best to deliver mental health care in prisons, but the simple fact is that many people with mental illness in prisons are there for very minor reasons and would be better off diverted from prison. There are some very innovative programmes, particularly the court liaison and diversion service at Cloverhill Prison, but these need to be rolled out nationally to ensure people with serious mental illness, whose offending is very minor and related to their illness, receive treatment rather than custody. Prison is non-therapeutic no matter how hard people try to make it so. Prison is toxic for people with mental illness.