Changing legal characteristics of dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD) patients and prisoners

Abstract

We investigated the legal status of 172 dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD) patients and prisoners. Dangerous and severe personality disorder prisoners were more likely to have been serving indeterminate sentences, while patients admitted to hospital units were more likely to have been given determinate sentences. At admission, the majority of prisoners were in advance of their tariff expiry or parole eligibility dates, while the majority of patients had passed them. Patients previously serving a determinate prison sentence were close to their non parole date (NPD), the date they expected to be released from prison, with 40% of pre-NPD patients found to have less than two weeks to serve. At follow-up 85% of patients originally serving a determinate sentence had passed their NPD. While only three prisoners passed their NPD during the study, all were still detained. These findings suggest that a proportion of patients were ‘preventively detained’ within the DSPD hospital units.