Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
Recently the 1959 Mental Health Act has been criticized because of an apparent increase of psychiatric referrals from courts and prisons, and it has been suggested that there has been an increase of social pathology since the passing of this Act (Rollin, 1963). A previous study (West, Bearcroft and Smith, 1960) showed that men were remanded in custody rather than on bail for psychiatric reports largely for social reasons, and in a more recent study (Bearcroft and Donovan, 1965) the incidence of criminal behaviour in the mentally ill seemed to depend, to some extent, upon social factors.
eLetters
No eLetters have been published for this article.