Millfields and Swaleside Follow-Up Study v1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A Retrospective Follow-up of Two Services for High Risk Offenders with Personality Disorder
IRAS ID
290705
Contact name
Celia Taylor
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
East London NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Personality disorders (PDs) are a group of mental health disorders that are characterised by inflexible, maladaptive patterns of behaviour, emotional expression and cognition. These patterns are long-standing and affect a range of personal and social situations (World Health Organisation, 2010; American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway programme is a jointly commissioned initiative between NHS England and Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service. It encompasses psychologically informed services for offenders who are likely to have a PD. These treatment services are set in prisons, secure hospitals, and community settings, and all aim to reduce repeat offending and improve psychological wellbeing (Joseph & Benefield, 2012).
There is limited evidence that various treatments have a positive impact on recidivism rates and psychological/behavioural outcomes among personality disordered offenders, but these suffer from methodological problems and there is a major lack of follow-up studies (Warren et al., 2003; Capone et al. 2016). This study will be the first to examine the long-term psychosocial and reoffending outcomes, as well as the impact of services on sentence progression, for all men who have passed through two OPD Pathway services since they opened: a Psychologically Informed Planned Environment (PIPE) at HMP Swaleside and an adapted therapeutic community model run by the Millfields Unit. The two services target high-risk offenders who likely have PD and who are typically considered difficult to manage. All data will be gathered from existing service, prison, probation and police records.
The results could help to inform the future development and improvement of similar services, in order to improve the availability and effectiveness of services supporting offenders with PD. The study is also relevant to the general public, particularly as measures of re-offending rates will help to determine whether the OPD strategy is meeting its objective to improve public protection.
REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/EE/0085
Date of REC Opinion
11 Jul 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion