1 - Offender-patients: the people nobody owns

Summary

Introduction

When my fellow conference organizers prevailed upon me, not only to act as chairman for this discussion of future provision for mentally disordered offenders but, in addition, to make some introductory observations and to sum up our deliberations, I can only assume they did so in the knowledge that I am something of a ‘meddler’ - a bit of a ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’. I suppose this role has some merit since it enables me to survey some aspects of the scene with a degree of detachment. It certainly enables me to make some brief comments on the legal, psychiatric and administrative aspects of the problem, to ask some questions, but not necessarily provide any answers. If I do no more than raise our consciousness of some of the issues, hopefully this will provide a background for some answers that may emerge as a result of the contributions from the distinguished speakers who are to follow me in the next two and a half days. Maybe my role can best be likened to that of ‘chorus’ or ‘prologue’ used to such good effect by writers such as Shakespeare. Unfortunately I cannot aspire to the heights of imaginative puissance of the ‘brightest heaven of invention’ deployed by chorus in Henry V. Such talents as I have may be likened more to those of the plodding, ancient Gower in Pericles, who sings ‘a song that old was sung’ (Act I). I hope, I shall, at least, be unlike the worthy Gower and cause ‘no din but snores the house about’ (Act III). Nor, hopefully, shall I be like Dry den's Midwife, who ‘laid her hand on his Thick Skull, with his Prophetick blessing - Be Thou Dull.’ Absalom and Achitophel (Pt.2 476).

Offenders, deviants or patients?

When I made my first substantial foray into the social aspects of forensic psychiatry I called my book Offenders, Deviants or Patients? (Prins, 1980). I did this because I felt that not only was there ambivalence, uncertainty and ambiguity about the people who constituted my title, but that the title also reflected a constantly shifting mad, bad and sad group, whose madness, badness and sadness were also present in ever-changing degrees within perhaps the same individual.