ABSTRACT
Drawing many earlier discussions in the book together, this final chapter highlights some of the key themes that are raised by mental health and offending. Beginning with the ethical issues raised by working at the intersection of health and criminal justice, we revisit the core challenge of trying to balance public protection with the rights of the individual offender with mental disorder, along with related challenges surrounding the ‘care’, ‘control’ and ‘coercion’ of offenders with mental health problems. Here, we learn that care, control and coercion are inevitable features of the ways in which this heterogeneous population is governed, and that just as there are ‘bad’ forms of care, there may be ‘good’ forms of control. The chapter then considers some of the key staffing and organisational challenges presented by working with mentally disordered offenders, identifying a number of iatrogenic effects of working at the intersection of health and criminal justice. The chapter ends by considering several subgroups of mentally disordered offenders, who are often subject to disproportionate criminal justice and mental health attention while sometimes also being excluded or overlooked by these same agencies.
