A forensic psychiatrist with 23 years experience says the increasing incarceration of people who are mentally unwell is unethical and likely unlawful.
Corrections Department figures show that in 2023 around 62% of prisoners nationwide met the diagnostic threshold for mental health or substance-use disorder, and 91% would meet the criteria during their lifetimes.
Dr Erik Monasterio resigned last year as Clinical Director and Director of area mental health services for the Canterbury Region, saying the treatment -- or lack of it -- for prisoners with disabling mental health disorders was ethically intolerable.
He says many mental health patients are spending up to 23 hours a day alone in so called Intervention and Support Units within prisons.
Dr Monasterio says the situation is getting worse rather than better, and successive Ministers and senior health officials have known about it for years.
The Department of Corrections says all of its ISUs are “supported by specialist mental health professionals”.
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