Welcome

Beyond Silos: Reframing Mental Health, Trauma and Partnership Across Criminal Justice

Professor Charlie Brooker, Dr Andrew Fowler, Dr Vickie Barrett & Dr Stephanie Wallace

Welcome to this special issue of the British Journal of Community Justice on ‘Probation and mental illness’.

For much of the past three decades, research at the intersection of criminal justice and mental health has documented a remarkably consistent set of findings. People who come into contact with prisons, probation and community justice services experience disproportionately high levels of mental illness, substance misuse, trauma, neurodevelopmental disorders and social disadvantage. At the same time, criminal justice agencies have increasingly been expected to respond to these needs while continuing to fulfil their primary responsibilities of public protection and reducing reoffending. Despite considerable policy development, many of the structural challenges identified twenty or thirty years ago remain strikingly familiar today. Individuals continue to move between prison, probation, healthcare and community services through fragmented pathways, information sharing remains inconsistent, service thresholds frequently create barriers to access, and practitioners are often required to navigate increasingly complex cases within overstretched systems.

The papers brought together in this issue offer a timely opportunity to reflect on how the field has evolved. Although the studies originate from different countries, adopt different methodologies and focus on different populations, they converge around a common message: improving outcomes for justice-involved people requires systems that are integrated rather than fragmented, relationships that are collaborative rather than transactional, and approaches that recognise mental health, trauma and social disadvantage as central—not peripheral—to criminal justice practice. Collectively, these papers move beyond identifying problems towards exploring practical solutions capable of reshaping the relationship between criminal justice and health.

Continued below in foreword…

 

Journal Articles

Foreword: Beyond Silos: Reframing Mental Health, Trauma and Partnership Across Criminal Justice

Charlie Brooker, Andrew Fowler, Vickie Barrett & Stephanie Wallace

 

1) Development of a Partnership Enhancing Treatment Referrals, Pathways and Inter-Agency Communication Between an NHS Mental Health Trust and a Probation Delivery Unit

Andrew Bates, Gwen Bonner, Alan Buckley, Vicki Parkin, Sachana Rai & Jen Culver

2) Out of Reach: Mental Healthcare in Approved Premises and the Continuity of Care Gap in England and Wales

 Peter Marston & Charlie Brooker

3) The Prevent Project: Strengthening Mental Health and Suicide Prevention across European Criminal Justice Systems

Carmen-Valeria Baias, Rita Domingos, Eleni Vezali, Stefanos Alevizos, Ana Teresa Marques Silva, Amedeea Enache, Dimitris Georgoulis & Mihaela Pintea Traian

4) Youth justice staff and service-users’ experiences of Trauma-Informed Care: A qualitative study

Emma Facer-Irwin, Tuğçe Dolen, Frances Blumenfeld, Kate Budge & Danny Taggart

5) “We carry it around with us”: Community justice researcher reflections on doing emotionally demanding research

Kerry Ellis Devitt, David Coley & Jess Lawrence 

6) Specialised Mental Health Supervision: Officer Stress and Implementation

Nicholas Powell, Tonya Van Denise & Frances Chen

7) At the interface: Probation. Mental Health Systems and a Public Health Approach to Reoffending

Deborah Irwin

8) An Examination of Perceived Social Support and Abusive Parenting

Duygu & Pehlivanoglu 

9) Addressing the Needs of Those Experiencing Mental Illness in the Probation Services

Coral Sirdfield & Charlie Brooker

10) The role of navigators working in criminal justice and mental health settings.  Vital cogs in a fragmented system?

Chris Martin