ABSTRACT
The link between mental illness, violence and other offending remains an area of controversy. The debate can become polarised around two extremes: that no such link exists or the mentally ill as a group are violent. This chapter will place these debates within the context of the development of two interrelated policies – the expansion of the use of imprisonment and deinstitutionalisation. One of the most startling features of social policy development over the past 30 years is the expansion of the use of imprisonment. In the 1970s, criminologists were seriously considering how the prison as an institution was on the verge of disappearing and pondering how it would be replaced as the central penal mechanism in liberal democracies. The overlap between mental health and the criminal justice system is a well-established one. The criminal justice system has become a default provider of mental health care in many instances. The chapter will conclude with a brief discussion of Penrose’s hypothesis, which identified a hydraulic relationship between the use of imprisonment and the use of institutionalised forms of care for mental illness.
