Risk needs and management differences of high secure patients
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Offenders, prisoners, or patients? Risk needs and management differences of patients in high secure settings referred through different routes
IRAS ID
350730
Contact name
Greco Muratori
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The State Hospitals NHS Board for Scotland
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
TSHRC/020, Study reference number
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 28 days
Research summary
For a long time, there has been a debate on whether people who have committed an offence have done so because they lack the capacity to know any better, or whether they are morally culpable for their actions. This topic has also highlighted that people tend to view offenders as fitting into one of these two categories – ‘bad’ or ‘mad’. With this in mind, this study predicts that staff in a high secure forensic mental health hospital will have different views of patients: (a) who have been moved from prison for treatment (who we will call ‘Transfer for Treatment Direction patients’ or ‘TTDs’ – with reference to the legislation by which they are admitted to hospital), and (b) who have been admitted through other hospitals or the Courts (who we will call ‘non-TTD patients’). We believe they will have views of the TTDs as ‘bad’ and therefore mainly needing to be managed; while they will see the non-TTDs as ‘mad’ and therefore mainly needing care and treatment.
The study will explore whether TTDs get assigned stricter security measures than non-TTDs, in a high security hospital. This will then be compared to whether TTDs actually show more challenging behaviours or more risks factors for this than non-TTDs – to see if the stricter security measures are justified. It is predicted that TTD patients are managed under stricter security measures, but that they do not display more incidents or risk of challenging behaviour than the non-TTD group.
We argue that this research will be helpful in explore the impact of possible views of TTD patients on the treatment they receive in a high secure hospital. We believe that this will help to highlight areas of training to focus on, to improve the care that is provided to all patients in these settings.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 4
REC reference
25/WS/0058
Date of REC Opinion
9 May 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion