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It turns out that the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, which is administered as part of Metropolitan Police's specialist operations department which oversees anti-terrorist investigations and royal and diplomatic protection, has been set up with the aim of detaining people who are likely stalkers of prominent people, politicians, etc under the mental Health Act. It also seems to have the specific purpose of sectioning people who are suspected terrorists, and "has the legal right to detain people indefinitely without trial, criminal charges or evidence of a crime being committed" under the Mental Health Act (quote from The Independent's article which will go to subscription only in a week or so).
The Times reports on the MHA and F-TAC: "Until now it has been up to mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained, but the new unit uses the police to identify suspects, increasing fears that distinctions are being blurred between criminal investigations and doctors’ clinical decisions."
The article continues: "The government is trying to amend the act, with a controversial bill introduced in November, to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder in order to give doctors more power to detain people.
"At least one terror suspect, allegedly linked to the 7/7 bomb plot and a suicide bombing in Israel, has already been held under the Mental Health Act. The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, absconded from the hospital where he was being detained and has never been traced."
So not only will the police be able to stop and question individuals purely on the basis that they would like to check who they are and what they have been doing (and levy a fine of £5,000 for non-co-operation), they are already using what seems very much like the methods and powers of a police state.
Interestingly, a link which Google had to a PDF of a job description at F-TAC now shows up with "We could not process your request because:- * The requested HR Job Desc document does not exist."
Chase Farm Hospital, where the programme was developed, has a page about F-TAC on the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust website as part of the Department of Health's R&D annual reports by NHS organisations in England for 2006 which has the following information:
"Summary of programme area and objectives
The main programme concerns the fixated and the threat that they pose to prominent people. Research funding from the Home Office, by competitive tender, has now reached £550,000 in the last three years, including the current financial year. We are the principal researchers and the grant holders. The project also involves amongst its members the foremost forensic psychiatrist in the field of stalking (from Melbourne) and the most prominent forensic psychologist (from San Diego). We have now also recruited the psychologist who has done the most work in this area with respect to the U.S. Congress (from Nebraska).
"The research programme is the first to consider the fixated as a concept. It is the first in the U.K. to examine the threat to prominent people and ways in which this can be assessed and managed. It results will be the most thorough in this area in the world literature. The programme has involved joint working with the police and the analysis of 10,000 police files. It has involved visits to the FBI, the US Secret Service, the Capitol Hill Police, the Swedish Security Service and the Norwegian Security Police. Its product is the design and implementation (as part of the product) of an innovative new National Threat Assessment and Management Unit, jointly run by mental health and police personnel. This concerns the identification and diversion into psychiatric care of mentally ill people fixated on the prominent. This will be the most developed such service in the world.
"We are also a participating centre in six projects financed by the European Commission, two in conjunction with the Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim and two with the University of Modena (other collaborators being the Universities of Leuwen and Amsterdam). The first three of these concern the comparative study of mental health law across the European Union. They should as an outcome contribute towards harmonisation in these areas across the members of the Union. The second three projects concern women victims of stalking and the health professions. The projects concern an investigation of the awareness and perception of stalking issues amongst police and health care professionals in different European countries, and the development of educational materials about stalking and its psychological sequelae. Both sets of projects are part of coherent cross-national programmes which are set to develop further. "
...
"Examples of impact on health services or policy
Based on the results of the research, a national Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC) has been established to assess and manage risk to the prominent from the mentally ill. This is the first joint mental health-police unit in the UK. As such, it is a prototype for future joint services in other specialty areas. Funding for the mental health component for the initial two years of £500,000 is being jointly provided by the Home Office and the Department of Health. The service is one of particular interest to other countries in their attempts to develop models to manage similar problems. " |
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