Prisoner or Patient?
' I think the public uses psychiatry in the sense of lubricating its own conscience.'
DR PAUL BOWDEN , psychiatrist for the Prosecution in the Nilsen trial. As increasingly horrendous crimes hit the headlines, we demand clear answers -bad or mad? Should we punish or treat? There is understandable public suspicion that whenever psychiatrists give evidence about mental abnormality in court, justice may not be done and the accused may somehow get off lightly.
This film explores how the system actually works. Filmed in prison, special hospitals, and NHS psychiatric hospitals, it asks how offenders who are judged to be mentally ill are dealt with. Are special hospitals really the ' soft option' that is feared? Has psychiatry, or society, any answer at all to the problem of psychopaths-who are in fact not mad? And what happens to the thousands of people whose cases never hit the headlines?
Film editor MICHAEL FLYNN
Horizon editor GRAHAM MASSEY
Written and produced by HILARY HENSON