Risk assessments conducted before Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe transferred to prison
Transferring prisoners from high-security psychiatric centres back into jails happens more often than people realise, an expert has said.
Dr Ruth Tully, a consultant forensic psychologist at the University of Nottingham, was speaking after the recommendation that the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe should be returned to prison as he is no longer deemed mentally ill.
The final decision to transfer Sutcliffe back to prison lies with the Justice Secretary.
Dr Tully said that Sutcliffe would have undergone constant assessment from people who had been treating him at Broadmoor.
She said: “It’s perhaps more common than the public realise.
"When someone is deemed as stable or manageable they are often transferred back to prison, especially in cases where the person was transferred from prison in the first place like here.
“He would have been assessed by a multi-disciplinary team, including psychiatrists, specialist forensic mental health nurses, psychologists, hospital occupational therapists who will have come to this decision.
“They will have conducted risk assessments, they will also have looked at his compliance and response to medication and treatment through observing him, and trialling different medications in the past and finding what works for him.”
Forensic psychiatrist Tony Maden "surprised" by time Peter Sutcliffe spent at Broadmoor https://t.co/P9MvCSifvl https://t.co/GMxcN4bMq1
— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 1, 2015
She added that there would have been no set time frame for transferring Sutcliffe back to prison.
“Assessments are ongoing, so you could consider that the time he has spent in hospital the assessment period.
“Over all of those years, he will have been looked at in the context of how well he is doing and possibly in the more recent past, working towards a goal, which might have been discharge back to prison.
“Setting goals with patients who are detained is often very useful because otherwise the future can seem hopeless, particularly if they are indefinitely detained.”
