Mental Health and Custody - 668/2021

Request:

I write regarding a Freedom of Information request about s135 and 136 detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983 and would be grateful if you could provide me with the following information.

1. Please provide a breakdown of s135 and s136 detentions who were held in police custody in the financial years 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21.
2. How many people who were held in police custody were experiencing a mental health crisis in the above years.
3. The average length of detention in each of the above years and how many were detained for the maximum 36 hours.
4. How many callouts your police force area had relating to mental health and mental health crises in each of the above years.
5. A breakdown of funding provided by Welsh Government and your police force area to mental health triage schemes in the above years.

 

Clarification sought:

Please can you provide an explanation of or definition of their view of term ‘mental health crisis’

 

Clarification received:

In this case, the definition of mental health crisis would be any situation in which a person’s actions, feelings, and behaviours can lead to them hurting themselves or others, and/or put them at risk of being unable to care for themselves or function in the community in a healthy manner. 

For example, suicidal thoughts, self-harming, episodes of mania or psychosis, although I would use s.135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act as a guide.

 

 

Response:

Responses to questions(Q) 1-4:

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested, the details of which are as follows:

	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Period	Number Persons Detained	No. Suffering MH Crisis	Average of Detention Length (H:MM:SS)*	No. MH Related Incidents
2018-19	3	2	24:03:42	414
2019-20	9	7	08:52:17	745
2020-21	2	2	00:21:10	976

*Zero (0) individuals were detained for the maximum 36 hours.

 

Response to question 5:

I can confirm there is no information held by Dyfed Powys police as no Welsh Government funding has been received in respect of mental health triage schemes for the period of time requested.

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It should be noted that owing to the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such matters the information provided may or may not be accurate.        

Police Forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide statistics to government bodies and the recoding criteria is set nationally.  However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted that for these reasons this Force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.