Background: Mental disorder is more prevalent among people in prison than in the general population. Prisoners who require transfer to psychiatric hospitals for treatment face long delays. Doctors working in prisons regularly face ethical and legal dilemmas posed by prisoners with mental illness.
Aims: To develop a policy for providing treatment under the common law to prisoners with mental disorders who lack treatment decision-making capacity, while arrangements are made to transfer them to hospital.
Method: The policy was developed through literature review and consultation with the Faculty of Law at Southampton University and health care staff at Winchester prison in the UK.
Results: The policy provides guidelines for establishing decision-making capacity, standards for documentation, and guidelines for implementation based on the Mental Health Act Code of Practice, other best-practice guidelines and case law.
Conclusions: It can be argued that case law allows more-extensive treatment to be provided in the best interests of the incompetent prisoner, beyond emergency situations. The policy has ethical implications and its use should be carefully monitored.