Prisons not ideal

Only 300 prison beds left in New Zealand (Feb 22) shows we need more prisons or that we imprison fewer people.

I suggest the latter. At present, 20 per cent of our prison population are mentally ill, the huge majority suffering from chronic schizophrenia.

Allow me to give readers a history lesson: Before 1992, we had not one mentally ill person in prison. Any prisoner becoming mentally ill would be immediately transferred to a mental hospital for the duration of his/her illness.

The radically new philosophy of the 1992 Mental Health Act meant that no longer was a diagnosis of chronic mental illness of any consequence in our society.

This law change, of course, was a pre-requisite to enable authorities cynically to close our residential hospitals and discharge the patients to look after themselves.

In 2006, New Zealand became a signatory to the United Nations’ Disability Convention. Article 15 here expressly bans mentally handicapped people from ‘‘degrading treatment or punishment’’.

I suggest that instead of building more prisons we amend the 1992 Mental Health Act and build suitable residential institutions properly staffed (also with occupational therapists) for those of our schizophrenic population who are so desperately in need of it.

We would then be true adherents to the UN convention, and need no more prisons.