Mentally Disordered Offenders: Managing People Nobody Owns

Mentally disordered offenders present particular problems in our society, which wants both to sympathize and to punish. How do we achieve a balance between sympathy towards their illness and genuine worries about their offending behavior? What do we do for - and about - people who have been released from prison yet continue to pose risks to the safety of others?Managing the Mentally Disordered Offenderpresses the case for better health care of mentally disturbed law breakers and the need to spare them unnecessary punishment. With specialist contributors from criminology, criminal justice, social work, probation practice and the law, the book stresses the importance of professional cooperation in community-based services. At the same time it acknowledges the psychologically demanding nature of working with mentally disordered people and ther very real challenges of attempting to contain their wrongdoing without recourse to the repressiveness of imprisonment.