Pressure groups condemn sentences

Campaigners last week expressed their anger at prison sentences
passed on two individuals with a history of psychiatric
illness.

Wayne Hutchinson received six life sentences for two convictions
for manslaughter, one of attempted murder, and three of wounding
with intent.

He carried out the attacks in December 1994, shortly after being
released from the South Western Hospital, south London.

Hutchinson will first be sent to Broadmoor secure hospital, but
will be sent to prison as and when he is deemed well.

David Morgan was given ten life sentences for wounding with
intent at a shop in Birmingham. He had been an in-patient six years
before the attacks.

Marjorie Wallace of the pressure group SANE said it was ‘a
desperate indictment of the psychiatric system’.

Alison Cobb, policy officer at Mind, said it was a retrograde
move ‘when someone who could be helped is put into an overstretched
prison system’.

Michael Howlett, a director of the Zito Trust, said the
sentences were ‘an expression of lack of confidence in the
psychiatric system’.

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