WHEN a man with manifest mental problems and who poses a danger to others has to be remanded in prison because there is no secure hospital accommodation available, it is not just unfortunate.

For, when the shortage is so severe that it can be months before a place can be had, it amounts to a national scandal, as Blackburn stipendiary magistrate Jonathon Finestein rightly complained as he found his hands tied when dealing with a mentally-sick man appearing before him on charges of affray and criminal damage.

But, in this instance, are we not yet again witnessing another sorry snapshot of the failed policy of closing down mental institutions that used to offer secure accommodation?

The previous Tory administration closed them down in the speciously enlightened belief that patients would benefit from being cared for in the community - although many suspected that the policy was inspired more by cost-cutting than enlightenment. For if there were many patients who did benefit from the policy - though the distressing record of patients and the community being frequently let down by the policy always poured doubt on this assumption - it would always be the case that there would be some who would need to be held in secure conditions for their own good and for the safety of the community at large.

The shocking incidence of attacks on others by unsupervised mental patients and the suicide level among them may have led the government two years ago to reverse the policy of sending seriously-disturbed psychiatric patients into the community.

But it would seem that, even now, the level of provision for them in hospitals remains woefully inadequate despite the necessity for more having been recognised by this policy change.

It is no good the government having such good and commonsense intentions if they are not matched by real resources to match their implementation.

And Mr Finestein is right: it is a national scandal when people who need help are consigned to a prison and not a hospital.

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