Mental health and the justice system
Making the case for action
High numbers of offenders in the criminal justice system have mental health needs and vulnerabilities that go unidentified and unmet. There’s an over-representation of people with 1 or more mental health diagnoses in secure and detained settings.
NHS Long Term Plan
Building on the commitments made in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, the NHS Long Term Plan pledges to improve mental health support in the criminal justice system, including improved continuity of care for people entering or leaving prison, and supporting community service treatment requirements for people who might otherwise get a prison sentence.
Finding the right information
The easiest way of finding all our guidance related to mental health and the justice system is on the topic page on prisons and other secure settings.
NICE Pathways bring together everything we’ve said on a topic in an interactive flowchart. The main NICE Pathway in this area is health of people in the criminal justice system.
The following video explains how to use NICE Pathways.
How to use NICE Pathways
Using quality standards to make an impact on care and support
Quality standards contain a list of quality statements, each describing a priority area for quality improvement. They include metrics that can be a useful source of key performance indicators or performance metrics for system-wide performance dashboards. They help you identify areas to make high impact improvements in mental health of adults in the justice system. See how to use quality standards for more information.
The main quality standard that can help with delivering high-quality mental health care is mental health of adults in contact with the criminal justice system.
Support for improving quality
Tools and resources
We publish a range of tools and resources to help with putting our guidance into practice. You can find these on the ‘Tools and resources’ tab for any guidance.
The NICE guideline on mental health of adults in contact with the criminal justice system has a resource on questions for first-stage health assessment at reception into prison.
NICE impact report on mental health
The impact report highlights progress made by the health and care system in implementing NICE guidance. It can be used to inform benchmarking and planning.
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