Foreign nationals in prison: The mental health issues
At the end of June 2006, foreign nationals made up 13% (9,651) of the overall prison population (Prison Reform Trust 2006).
Currently 11,000 of the UK’s prison population of 81,000 are foreign nationals (BBC News 2007). (A foreign national is defined as an individual who does not hold a UK passport. People who are legally resident in the UK but do not hold a UK passport are also considered to be foreign nationals). Most foreign national prisoners have committed drug crimes such as drug trafficking (Prison Reform Trust 2006). In October 2007, two UK prisons; Bullwood Hall and Canterbury were re-rolled to take only foreign nationals. Both prisons have been given extra help to deal with foreign prisoners such as immigration, legal and language support. The move to identify two specific prisons to deal with foreign nationals is part of the government initiative to speed up deportations.
Foreign nationals are at first sight a very diverse group, coming from over 168 countries but on closer inspection, over half are from six key countries namely; Jamaica, the Irish Republic, Nigeria, Pakistan and India. Jamaicans make up the largest group (Prison Reform trust 2006). Little is known about the mental health needs of foreign national prisoners, mainly because until recently they have been dispersed throughout the prison service. However, concerns about the rates of suicide in foreign nationals in prisons had previously been reported (Harris et al 2006). In 2006, HM Inspectorate of Prisons conducted a study on foreign nationals. One of the issues considered was that of self harm. In this study, 13% of foreign nationals stared that they felt like harming themselves, but since there is no benchmark for British prisoners it is difficult to know what to make of this data.
In our next edition of Focus we will be presenting the findings of our literature review on the mental health needs of foreign nationals and our suggestions on good practice in working with this group.
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