The devil you know: Forensic psychiatry and getting inside the minds of criminals

In this new extract from Dr Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne’s book, we meet Jimmy who was sentenced to life for a gang-related murder and sectioned for psychiatric treatment

What goes on in the minds of criminals? (Getty/iStock)

Early on in my career, as a young trainee forensic psychiatrist at Broadmoor back in the late 1980s, I was sent to a prison to evaluate a prisoner for transfer to the hospital for psychiatric treatment. Jamal was a young man serving a life sentence for a gang-related murder whose mental health had apparently deteriorated so badly that he had been held in the segregation unit for six weeks; the prison psychiatrist had requested that he be “sectioned”. My rookie nervousness increased when I learned he’d been smearing his cell and hurling faeces at the prison officers. I was advised to speak to him through a gap in the door and “watch his hands in case he has more s*** to throw”. I peered in at him cautiously, a thin, childlike form curled up on the bed, and lamely attempted to make a connection. Before long he was provoked enough to launch his naked body at the door, baring his teeth and hissing at me. I was quick to recommend him for transfer.

Thirty years on I was working with a clinical team putting together a therapy group for violent offenders centred on the theme of fatherhood, and I went to offer a place to “Jimmy”. A portly older patient, he was articulate and open, with a friendly smile. He’d been in and out of secure hospital over the years, recently becoming distressed upon learning of a daughter he’d never known, born after he went to prison. She was now a grown woman wishing to make contact.

When, to my amazement, I eventually realised that Jimmy was the same Jamal I’d met long ago, I told him so, but understandably, given his mental distress at that time, he had no memory of our dramatic first encounter.