High-Risk Carstairs Patients Win Release

Seven high-risk patients at Carstairs mental hospital will be released to less secure accommodation within weeks. The patients were all judged by Scottish courts to pose a risk to public safety but have had their security status downgraded partly as a result of European human rights laws.

It is understood they include at least one paranoid schizophrenic who was sent to Carstairs after a stabbing.

Instead of living behind the high fences and locked doors of Carstairs, they will be kept in ‘medium-secure’ units and allowed escorted outside visits.

Last week, a convicted killer and former Carstairs inmate went on the run from a medium-secure unit in Edinburgh.

New laws, introduced to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, came into force late last year allowing Carstairs patients to challenge their security grading.

So far, 32 have appealed; 15 successfully. Of those, seven are in the highest-risk category and are subject to court-imposed restriction orders on the basis that they pose a risk to public safety. Despite that, they will be released to medium-secure units within weeks.

Insiders say one of the patients is Michael Ferguson, 38, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and detained in Carstairs in 1994 after a knife attack in a Lanarkshire doctor’s surgery.

In 1999, Sheriff J Douglas Allan concluded that Ferguson needed to stay at Carstairs for further treatment because “even in an ordinary psychiatric hospital… it was highly likely, given the nature of his disorder, that the applicant would break down and abuse alcohol or drugs, commit further offences and be a danger to the public as well as endangering his own health and safety”.

Ferguson briefly absconded just over two years ago in a high-profile incident which led to First Minister Jack McConnell ordering a review of the rules on patient release.

Details of where the former high-security patients will be treated are being kept secret but it is believed many will go to purpose-built units at the Orchard Clinic, Edinburgh, and Leverndale Hospital, Glasgow.

The transfers are going ahead despite a lack of proper facilities to receive patients. A new medium-security unit at Stobhill Hospital will not open until June, but if the patients stay much longer at Carstairs the health boards in charge of their care might face court action.

A health board source said: “We have no choice. If they refused to accept the transfer of patients they could face court cases and claims for compensation.”

Concern over the safety of the transfers has been heightened by the escape of convicted killer and former Carstairs patient James Cowan. He absconded last Thursday from the Orchard Clinic and handed himself in to police in Greenock yesterday.

While such medium-security units are locked, the conditions are far from being prison-like and patients are allowed escorted outside visits.

Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie said: “These patients were sent by a court to a place of high security because they were deemed to present a risk to the public, so if there is to be a change to the regime, it should involve judicial parole assessment and not just a mental health assessment.

“The public will be aghast that people who were deemed by the courts to be a risk to the public are being moved without a proper assessment of whether they are no longer a risk.”

Carstairs is run by a special State Hospital Board. Its chairman, Gordon Craig, confirmed: “The patients won the legal right to a transfer by appealing to the Mental Health Tribunal which was set up by the Mental Health Act 2003.

“It may seem that a lot of people are coming out of the hospital, but the reality is that they should not be there in the first place and we have no legal right to detain them.”

Gordon insisted the transfers posed “no risk to the public”. An Executive spokeswoman said that a sheriff is always on the tribunal for restricted patients and “all appeals are considered carefully by the panel”.

Appeal victories

• In total, 32 patients at the hospital have appealed to a tribunal under the new rights in the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) Act 2003.

• Carstairs staff expect more than 50 appeals to be lodged, with up to 30 patients winning the right to move.

• Those challenging their imprisonment are expected to include Alexander Reid, 56, left, who was sent to Carstairs after stabbing a young mother to death.

• Michael Ferguson, 38, above, who was detained in Carstairs in 1994 after a knife attack in a Lanarkshire doctor’s surgery, is thought to be ready for transfer.