Over the past two weeks that bastion of bonkers television, Channel 5, has surprisingly proved itself to be almost worthy of its existence by showing a two-part series which was both well made, informative, and not about a Z-list celebrity-turned-benefit-scrounger with a failed gastric band trying to get into the Big Brother house while guest-starring as the corpse in a re-run of CSI/Law and Order. (Think I covered all their usual bases there...) Instead, "Inside Broadmoor" had exclusive access to the archives of possibly the most notorious of Britain's maximum security secure psychiatric hospitals (bonus points to you if you have actually heard of both Rampton and Ashworth, the two other secure psychiatric hospitals for England and Wales. Extra-special double bonus points if you were aware of the existence of Carstairs State Hospital in Scotland, which performs the same function for patients for Scotland and Northern Ireland), and spoke to those who have previously worked in the hospital. (Extra gold star triple bonus points if you remembered Broadmoor actually IS a hospital and not a prison...some people tend to forget it actually has a therapeutic function given the notoriety of some of its patients...)
Now those of you who know me well will be fully aware of my somewhat perverse fascination with the mind of the "criminal lunatic", as the original inhabitants of the 150 year old hospital were oft referred to. As my friend Lee has pointed out to me on more than one occasion, I do like a good psychopathic murderer every now and then; not on a personal level, obviously - never going to go and have tea and cake with Peter Sutcliffe, for example - but from a professional psychological point of view. A programme about Broadmoor was going to draw me like a moth to the proverbial flame and, for once, I was not disappointed with a Channel 5 show. (I'm sorry, C5, but when you dropped Prison Break and let it go to Sky when I didn't actually have Sky it caused a huge rift between us which I've never fully gotten over...) Not only was it interesting from a professional psychological angle but from a social historical angle as well; some of the stuff in those archives is amazing, especially concerning Broadmoor's role in some real pioneering "treatments", and I would quite happily lose myself among its treasures for hours at a time. There were also real nuggets of gold in some of the information about the patients as well, and not just some of the more historical ones. I was beyond intrigued to learn for example, that the Medical Superintendent in charge of the hospital at the time of the Moors Murders - a rather excellent chap from Glasgow named Pat McGrath, who brought his wife and two kids to live with him in the hospital and instituted a rather compassionate regime (his son, who was seven at the time they moved in, recalls walking the grounds with his father one evening when they heard a terrible scream coming from Block 6, where the most disturbed male patients were kept; Dr McGrath glanced up and said "poor John, having a bad night tonight", which reinforced in the boy that these people were in fact sick and needed treatment). I've digressed...oh yes, so the excellent Dr McGrath was in charge of the hospital at the time of the Moors Murders and was a jolly sensible and compassionate man, in charge of a large population of schizophrenics (about two-thirds of the hospital patients have schizophrenia) and those with severe personality disorders such as psychopaths. Some of the most notorious inmates of that hospital have been incredibly challenging men, who have committed the most dreadful crimes imaginable, and yet the estimable doctor believed fully in caring for his patients and apparently lost the plot whenever anyone called Broadmoor a prison instead of a hospital. However, not even the remarkable Pat McGrath felt anything could be done to treat Ian Brady; he refused point blank to bring him into the hospital, sensing no humanity in the man with which he could build a therapeutic relationship, and stated that Broadmoor had nothing to offer him as he was "beyond psychiatric help". I'll leave you to insert your own comments on that one; suffice to say Brady was sent to the maximum security prison at Durham until 1985, when he was sent to Ashworth. (Interestingly - to me, anyway - this sentiment reminds me of the one expressed by one of my personal heroes, former FBI Behavioural Analysis Unit Chief and pioneer in the 'profiling' field John Douglas, who stated that in order to rehabilitate an offender, any offender, you have to have something to rehabilitate to, which many of these individuals seem not to possess).
Now those of you who know me well will be fully aware of my somewhat perverse fascination with the mind of the "criminal lunatic", as the original inhabitants of the 150 year old hospital were oft referred to. As my friend Lee has pointed out to me on more than one occasion, I do like a good psychopathic murderer every now and then; not on a personal level, obviously - never going to go and have tea and cake with Peter Sutcliffe, for example - but from a professional psychological point of view. A programme about Broadmoor was going to draw me like a moth to the proverbial flame and, for once, I was not disappointed with a Channel 5 show. (I'm sorry, C5, but when you dropped Prison Break and let it go to Sky when I didn't actually have Sky it caused a huge rift between us which I've never fully gotten over...) Not only was it interesting from a professional psychological angle but from a social historical angle as well; some of the stuff in those archives is amazing, especially concerning Broadmoor's role in some real pioneering "treatments", and I would quite happily lose myself among its treasures for hours at a time. There were also real nuggets of gold in some of the information about the patients as well, and not just some of the more historical ones. I was beyond intrigued to learn for example, that the Medical Superintendent in charge of the hospital at the time of the Moors Murders - a rather excellent chap from Glasgow named Pat McGrath, who brought his wife and two kids to live with him in the hospital and instituted a rather compassionate regime (his son, who was seven at the time they moved in, recalls walking the grounds with his father one evening when they heard a terrible scream coming from Block 6, where the most disturbed male patients were kept; Dr McGrath glanced up and said "poor John, having a bad night tonight", which reinforced in the boy that these people were in fact sick and needed treatment). I've digressed...oh yes, so the excellent Dr McGrath was in charge of the hospital at the time of the Moors Murders and was a jolly sensible and compassionate man, in charge of a large population of schizophrenics (about two-thirds of the hospital patients have schizophrenia) and those with severe personality disorders such as psychopaths. Some of the most notorious inmates of that hospital have been incredibly challenging men, who have committed the most dreadful crimes imaginable, and yet the estimable doctor believed fully in caring for his patients and apparently lost the plot whenever anyone called Broadmoor a prison instead of a hospital. However, not even the remarkable Pat McGrath felt anything could be done to treat Ian Brady; he refused point blank to bring him into the hospital, sensing no humanity in the man with which he could build a therapeutic relationship, and stated that Broadmoor had nothing to offer him as he was "beyond psychiatric help". I'll leave you to insert your own comments on that one; suffice to say Brady was sent to the maximum security prison at Durham until 1985, when he was sent to Ashworth. (Interestingly - to me, anyway - this sentiment reminds me of the one expressed by one of my personal heroes, former FBI Behavioural Analysis Unit Chief and pioneer in the 'profiling' field John Douglas, who stated that in order to rehabilitate an offender, any offender, you have to have something to rehabilitate to, which many of these individuals seem not to possess).
However, the reason for this blog post is something which was said at the end of the programme and has left me pondering. Professor Tony Maden, former head of the now-closed Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) unit at the Berkshire hospital, stated that thanks to the anti-psychotic medication he's on to control his schizophrenia symptoms, serial murderer Peter Sutcliffe is no longer acutely mentally ill and, since the Broadmoor Hospital would appear to have achieved its aim of stabilising the patient's condition, he should be released back to prison. Now this throws up all kinds of interesting discussion points: exactly how stable is is "stable"; can we rely on the overstretched prison system to continue doling out the medication to Sutcliffe to keep him "stable", or will he relapse and have to be moved back to hospital; and how expensive will it be to send him to a prison where, for his own safety, he's going to have to be held in isolation? Now I'm not suggesting for one single second Peter Sutcliffe is some delicate little flower who has to be protected from all those nasty criminals in prison - the crimes he committed were, after all, completely and utterly reprehensible - but actually there is something in that. Those of you who know my little rants will be fully aware of my anti-death penalty stance (State-sanctioned murder is still murder, after all, and how can we say to people "killing is bad, m'kay?" when we, um, kill them...?) and this extends to this sort of situation as well. Now my emotional gut-response instinct is to be really pissed off when I hear that child sex offenders, for example, have to be segregated from the rest of the prison population 'for their own safety'; "let the gen. pop. lot have at them", I cry, "for surely they'll be doing us a favour!" However, I can't exactly claim to be a humanist/reasonably decent Human Bean if I'm prepared to turn a blind eye to the murder of an individual, no matter how morally repulsive they are to me on a personal level. (And please don't think I'm going for Joan of Arc-style sainthood here; my emotions run as pure and white-hot as anyone else's do, and there are people like Ian Huntley who really would be no great loss to the world if they died suddenly, but on a philosophical basis I have to stand by my belief that murder is murder is murder and therefore wrong, no matter who the victim is).
With someone like Sutcliffe, however, and this particular situation, I find myself concluding that, actually, somewhere like Broadmoor probably IS the best place for him no matter how stable his condition has now become. Think about it: this is a man who committed one of the most notorious crimes this country has ever had the misfortune to witness; whether for their own notoriety or out of some twisted form of justice, there are probably plenty of people in the prison system who'd like to get their hands on Peter Sutcliffe (he was attacked while in prison before his removal to Broadmoor). He has been diagnosed with a severe psychiatric condition which requires ongoing medication and treatment and has been held in Broadmoor since 1984; there is no doubt in my mind that he is going to be severely institutionalised as a result. Our prison system is already full of people suffering from mental health disorders who really shouldn't be there; I really don't think any prison, with the best will in the world, would be able to cope with the level of Sutcliffe's needs if he was removed there (and, thanks to a ruling in 2010, he will never be released). Bizarrely, even though he's actually considered stable enough to leave Broadmoor for the prison system, the secure hospital is probably the safest place for him. Many of the patients treated at the secure psychiatric hospitals will eventually be returned to prison once their condition has stabilised (although I'd be very interested to see any data relating to whether they are subsequently sent back to the hospitals for further treatment), but it seems some are destined to stay there even though they could, theoretically, be moved on.
And it's not just Sutcliffe. He at least has a treatable condition; you cannot cure schizophrenia, but at least you can provide medication to keep the symptoms under control. For psychopaths and others with severe personality disorders (such as Michael Stone, who in 1996 murdered Lin Russell and her daughter Megan, severely injuring her other daughter Josie), no amount of medication in the world is going to make the blindest bit of difference; since you cannot keep people in prison beyond their tariff - and especially since the Court of Human Rights has ruled the use of the "whole life" tariff (with no set time scale for reviews and the possibility of parole) as illegal - what do you do with these incredibly-dangerous individuals who can never, for the safety of everyone else, ever be allowed back on the streets?
The answer, it seems, has become Broadmoor and its sister-hospitals. This goes right to the heart of the dilemma of Broadmoor: originally conceived as a hospital, for a select group of individuals it has become the prison it was never intended to be. Believe me when I say I don't know what the answer is, and really, truly believe me when I say I'm extremely glad these most dangerous of individuals are securely held somewhere they can't be a danger to the public or commit further horrendous crimes, but also believe me when I say that this is a symptom of how we as a society view both mental health and those who commit crimes. Psychiatric-disordered offending isn't going to go away; people like Sutcliffe are merely the tip of the iceberg, especially when recent estimates from the Centre for Mental Health suggest approximately 60% of prisoners have some form of personality disorder and receive no help while in prison, and perhaps now, with the 150th anniversary of Broadmoor's founding upon us, we need to take a long hard look at how we treat them...
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