Authors' response

We are delighted that Drs Chao & Mudathikundan have taken the trouble to read our paper so carefully. Our personal experience is that getting any consistent information, rather than being easy as is suggested, on anything to do with the prison estate is actually quite difficult. Finding out whether a given establishment had an inreach team was something of a hurdle. Finding out how many remand compared with sentenced prisoners each institution really holds is even more problematic. We recognise the greater morbidity in the remand population – there are of course many variables, including this one, that could be looked at in a study of this nature, but in the absence of research funding simple studies are all that will be carried out. Our view when we set out was there had been little rational planning in mental health service provision in prisons – we feel that Dr Chao & Mudathikundan's final line, ‘The paper perhaps only highlights what we already know anecdotally’ vindicates us in having carried this work out – after all, is that not important? We certainly have no pretensions to anything greater. Unless the haphazard nature of service provision is highlighted, no one will do anything about it.