Psychiatric treatment for long-term prisoners “starts too late”

Long-term prisoners who are ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment before being released are having to wait too long to begin their therapy, a study has found.

The justice ministry’s research agency WODC said treatments tended to be less effective if prisoners had to wait years to access them.

Under a rule change introduced 2010, inmates now have to wait until two years before the end of their sentence before their treatment can begin. Previously they were able to start when they were one-third of the way through their term.

At the same time, the number of treatment orders (tbs) combined with sentences of more than 10 years has more than doubled in the last five years to 48, up from 21 in the previous five-year period.

A criminal serving 25 years now has to spend 23 years in jail before they can enter psychiatric care, compared to eight years under the old rules.

Too old to reintegrate

Lawyers and criminal psychiatrists say long waits to start treatment make it harder for inmates to begin and can exacerbate mental health conditions such as psychosis.

Marleen Nagtegaal, a researcher for WODC, said the findings of the study bore out this claim. “Psychiatric conditions can get worse, they can develop physical problems, or they’re so old by the time they start treatment that it’s hard for them to reintegrate,” she told NOS.

She added that there were wide differences between individual cases. “Someone who is psychotic and homeless can benefit from spending some time in prison first, so they can become stable again.”

In general, Nagtegaal said, it was “not sensible to wait to treat someone who is ill,” but she admitted that the different purposes of prison needed to be weighed up carefully.

“Retribution is also an important aspect of punishment that can’t just be smoothed over,” she said.

The justice ministry said it would respond to the report’s findings later in the year.