Sadly at the age of 22 while studying for a PhD in astrophysics he suffered a nervous breakdown. It began with serious suicide attempts – including setting himself on fire. Schizophrenia was diagnosed soon after this. From this time on Richard was seriously disabled by his mental illness. He spent the next 10 years in and out of psychiatric wards.

How did a highly intelligent young person with a long and well documented history of serious mental illness end his days in prison? 

I will describe to you how Richard was arrested.  Richard lived in Newcastle – there he was well known to the mental health services. Any incident would be dealt with by his care team and would usually result in hospital admission.  At one point his psychiatrist was listed as one of ‘my friends and family’ most called telephone numbers!

He met and began visiting a girlfriend at her Manchester home. During this time he was drinking excessively and smoking cannabis. While in Manchester, chaotic and disordered thinking resulted in his purchasing a replica airpistol. He was fascinated by guns and the idea of suicide by shooting. He threatened to shoot himself during a phone conversation with his sister.  She called the police as she was in fear for his safety. My daughter explained that her brother was mentally ill and threatening suicide.  She asked the police to remove the gun safely from him and to keep her informed of the outcome. They did not - and we foolishly believed that he would be safe in a psychiatric unit. Richard had no history of violence and had only ever harmed himself. 5 days later we discovered that Richard had resisted arrest and in a struggle the gun was discharged twice. Richard was taken to a police station and from there to HMP Manchester.

Following his arrest there appear to have been no systems in place to give Richard appropriate care.  Government policy is to promote the diversion of mentally ill offenders from the criminal justice system to health or social services at the earliest opportunity. For whatever reason: lack of hospital beds, poorly informed lawyers, pressure on the system, communication failures, poorly trained judges, lack of funding – Richard was entirely failed by this policy not translating into real action on the ground.

Once in the prison system – there was nothing we as a family could do for Richard. Visiting was difficult, applications have to be made in advance, and restricted to one hour only. We were unable to telephone him – prisoners are not allowed incoming calls.

The period of remand was far too long - from October through to May. At the final hearing Richard was sentenced to 5 years.

Richard did not cope well with prison. Care for the mentally ill should be therapeutic and in surroundings conducive to peace and recovery – not the barred, noisy, stressful and gardenless prison.  Those of you who have visited prisons will be aware of how unpleasant and entirely unsuitable a place they are for the mentally ill. Prisons spend more than half their NHS health budget on mental health care. They have health care units, employ psychiatric nurses and have in-reach teams – who do their best, but prison can never be appropriate for the mentally ill. His treatment was drug based. 

Richard was locked up for up to 15 hours a day and had only 2 hours of “association” with other prisoners per day. He was bullied and treated with suspicion by most of his fellow prisoners – partly because of his illness and partly through the fact he just did not “fit”. 

In a letter I received after his death, Richard wrote “you must understand that one of my beliefs, at a deep level, is that the world is a dangerous and malevolent place – this is common with my illness.  As a result, I do assume that everyone is out to get me... You can see that I am in a terrible situation, segregated, hated by the entire jail it seems and not knowing what will happen next. Someone could come to my door at any time and tell me I am off to some alien jail, unwanted by this establishment, only to find myself clawing out some kind of existence amongst a new set of threatening criminals. I hate this kind of life and I have considered actual suicide. I am by myself and the cell is cold.”