Mental Health Act 1959

72 Removal to hospital of persons serving sentences of imprisonment etc.

(1) If in the case of a person serving a sentence of imprisonment the Secretary of State is satisfied, by reports from at least two medical practitioners (complying with the provisions of this section)—

(a) that the said person is suffering from mental illness, psychopathic disorder, subnormality or severe sub-normality ; and

(b) that the mental disorder is of a nature or degree which warrants the detention of the patient in a hospital for medical treatment;

the Secretary of State may, if he is of opinion having regard to the public interest and all the circumstances that it is expedient so to do, by warrant direct that that person be removed to and detained in such hospital (not being a mental nursing home) as may be specified in the direction.

(2) A direction under this section (in this Act referred to as a transfer direction) shall cease to have effect at the expiration of the period of fourteen days beginning with the date on which it is given unless within that period the person with respect to whom it was given has been received into the hospital specified therein.

(3) A transfer direction with respect to any person shall have the like effect as a hospital order made in his case.

(4) Of the medical practitioners whose reports are taken into account under subsection (1) of this section, at least one shall be a practitioner approved for the purposes of section twenty-eight of this Act by a local health authority as having special experience in the diagnosis or treatment of mental disorders.

(5) A transfer direction shall specify the form or forms of mental disorder referred to in paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of this section from which, upon the reports taken into account under that subsection, the patient is found by the Secretary of State to be suffering; and no such direction shall be given unless the patient is described in each of those reports as suffering from the same one of those forms, whether or not he is also described in either of them as suffering from another of those forms.

(6) References in this section to a person serving a sentence of imprisonment include references—

(a) to a person detained in pursuance of any sentence or order for detention made by a court in criminal proceedings, or made or having effect as if made in any proceedings under the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933 (other than an order under any enactment to which section seventy-one of this Act applies or an order for detention in a remand home under section fifty-four or in a place of safety under section sixty-seven of the said Act of 1933);

(b) to a person committed to custody under subsection (3) of section ninety-one of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952 (which relates to persons who fail to comply with an order to enter into recognisances to keep the peace or be of good behaviour); and

(c) to a person committed by a court to a prison or other institution to which the Prison Act, 1952, applies in default of payment of any sum adjudged to be paid on his conviction.