The room treated the question less as a narrow verdict on one policy than as an indictment of a system that has lost control of its most serious cases. Yes won by 733 votes to 45, and the overwhelming margin matched the tone: alarmed, impatient and certain that warnings about danger had too often been discounted.
The floor’s most-respected Yes case called care in the community “a sick bureaucratic joke”, linking the Nottingham attacks to missed medication, ignored warnings and failures to act. Another highly rated voice reduced the governing principle to “safety first”, while others argued that secure beds, functioning crisis teams and properly funded services had been stripped away in the name of compassion.
The No case was present but markedly thinner. Its clearest defence was that “Community care generally leads to much better outcomes than instutionalising offenders”, while another No voter said “The entire system has failed the mentally ill”; a third shifted responsibility towards counter-terrorism services. The sides therefore talked past each other: Yes focused on foreseeable harm and public protection, while No challenged institutionalisation or widened the charge beyond community care itself.
The debate also showed that the winning side was not simply demanding confinement everywhere. Several voters called for reform, professional accountability and better decisions about who is safe outside hospital, with one formulation favouring “Freedom where it’s safe and intensive treatment and supervision where it’s not.” Others pointed to underfunding, staff shortages, dismissive assessments and the absence of meaningful support for patients as well as victims.
The verdict was less a celebration of secure hospitals than a refusal to accept unmanaged risk as a form of care. The chamber’s message was blunt: liberty without capacity, supervision or accountability no longer sounded like compassion.
18 Opinions
'Care in the community' is a sick bureaucratic joke that leaves dangerously psychotic individuals to roam the streets until innocent people get slaughtered. Just look at the Nottingham attacks... missed meds, ignored warrants, endless warnings brushed under the carpet by the NHS. Cutting secure beds and making it harder to section violent people isn't compassionate, it's pure state abandonment.
Its not just that there is no care in the community - it's that the professionals have decided it's rude to try - "They're just neuorodivergent. You're being racist (if they're brown). They haven't actually hurt anyone yet". And so on.
In the first place if failed the communities where these people released their anger and stress. If they pose the danger or we can't decide if they pose the danger remember: safety first. But it is cheaper and easier to let them roam on the streets in the name of false empathy.
Probably, I don’t have any experience of this but I do think the old asylum system should have been updated. The Stsrr does not spend its citizens money on things which would help them so social care at all levels is underfunded random & in many cases comprises criminal neglect for which transgressors are rarely brought to account. The Civil Serice always exempts itself from any responsibilities. That is the failure.
Yes there has been failures in the system, I'd like to know data to see how widespread it is, for certain the system needs help by the Government to protect mental health patients and safety of the public.
Too many criminals using mental health to escape responsibility for their crimes. Too many murders just lately committed by care in communities offenders. Secure facilities are definitely needed for more of them.
It has not only failed many mental health issues, but in many cases failed those who have fallen victim to them.
The services for those who pose a danger are usually for people who are likely to be terrorists, so the fault lies with counter terrorism etc.
The entire system has failed the mentally ill. And it should be held accountable for it's failings.
Yes especially as community care has failed so miserably, try getting a crisis team at 2am. They should never have shut the asylums.