FACTORS INFLUENCING THE ORGANIZATION OF PRISON MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

This book aims to further our understanding of prison mental health services by studying the factors that influence its organization and provision in a cross-national context. This was done by looking at two very different systems of mental health provision in prisons – English and Serbian. The English study explored the development of prison mental health services, more specifically that of in- reach teams which were envisaged in the 2001 policy "Changing the Outlook" as multi-professional prison mental health teams funded by the local primary care trusts. The Serbian study aimed to map the offender mental healthcare pathway as the first study of that nature ever undertaken in Serbia. The findings revealed that despite the two prison systems being on very different levels of development, they have many challenges in common. Issues such as resources, tensions of delivering care in a prison environment and overcrowding were deemed highly problematic in both countries. This has implications for the standards of international prison care and should be especially useful for criminal jusice researchers, teachers and policy makers.