Fitness to Plead: Impact of Mental Illness in Remand Prison Population
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Fitness to Plead: The Impact of Mental Illness in a Remand Prison Population
IRAS ID
232575
Contact name
Elena Bhattacharya
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 2 days
Research summary
“Fitness to plead” at trial is currently defined by the “Pritchard Test” which considers whether the defendant can understand the charges, enter a plea, instruct a lawyer and follow proceedings. When someone is unfit to plead, they are not tried but diverted from the criminal justice system e.g. sent to hospital for treatment.\nIn 2010, the Law Commission published a consultation paper which criticised the test and outlined a new approach. They called for a standardised psychiatric instrument to support legal professionals in determining unfitness to plead. This current proposed study is embedded in a wider programme which has developed a filmed vignette of court proceedings together with a structured interview to objectively assess FTP (Brown et al, in submission). This new instrument has been validated on a normal population, and a current study is looking at a magistrate court population to determine its validity in a legal setting. \nRemand prisoners are a significant group who will undergo FTP assessments. Mental illnesses such as depression and psychotic disorders are likely to impact upon FTP, but no data exists to date examining such patients’ performance on the new FTP test. This research seeks to fill this important gap in our knowledge. Therefore, prisoners without major mental illness, prisoners with depression, and prisoners assessed as having psychosis will be examined in this study for their fitness to plead.\nThe study comprises:\n1. a quantitative study in a prison setting of the above three groups of prisoners using a videobased clinical instrument for assessing fitness to plead (FTPtool); \n2. A comparison of these groups;\n3. A comparison with clinical judgement, to determine its validity within these specific populations;\n4. Examination of features associated with fitness to plead within prisoners with and without mental illness.\n
REC name
London - South East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/0180
Date of REC Opinion
1 May 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion