Making sense of the 'hybrid' hype

What is a "hybrid prison"? The concept was heavily trailed ahead of last week's government review of security crime and justice. However, the document contains only a slight reference to it. "Over the long term," it says, the government would consider "the potential role of specialist 'hybrid' prisons for the most serious offenders with significant mental health needs who have not already been transferred to secure hospitals".

It is rumoured that no one in the government departments responsible for offender health had previously heard of "hybrid prisons". The reference baffled criminal justice experts. "This sounds to me like make-it-up-as-you-go-along policy," says Enver Solomon, deputy director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London.

A Home Office spokeswoman subsequently tells Society Guardian that the concept, which she emphasises forms part of a 10-year vision, represents a "third way" of managing offenders with personality disorders - more commonly known as psychopaths - who could not easily be admitted to secure mental health services because they are considered as untreatable under the conditions of the Mental Health Act.

Hybrid prisons would offer services based around psychological interventions, such as cognitive behaviour treatments, she says, as well as other relevant needs, such as drug misuse services. The Home Office cites the dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD) pilot units at Whitemoor and Frankland prisons as examples of "what these services could look like". The units, she says, "combine a secure prison setting with a significant therapeutic programme".

This suggests that the government might consider an expansion of the hospital-within-a prison idea to treat the 2,500 prisoners estimated to meet DSPD criteria. The current number of DSPD places would hold just a fifth of that group. But they are expensive, and there is scant evidence the therapy works.

There is scepticism that a prison service pressing rapidly ahead with the building of another 8,500 ordinary prison places to keep ahead of demand will have any time or spare cash to treat psychopaths. "Hybrid prisons are a fantasy," says one Home Office insider. "I just despair."
