Mental patients escape

Last Tuesday, John Claydon fled from the Springfield medical hospital in London, along with another prisoner. John was detained for killing Ben Foster last April in Bath, he was kept in the medical unit for psychiatric assessment. According to Clare Wallace, Ben Foster’s mother, this would not have taken place if Claydon would have been imprisoned rather than detained in a medical hospital, which she mentioned before this escape. Alongside Claydon, prisoner John Slavin escaped, who was who was awaiting trial for violent burglary. Springfield hospital has been known for it’s breaches in the past, adding up to patients who were lost for several days and at one time even a murder by a fugitive. The organisation that runs the hospital had some other failures outside the hospital as well: Anthony Joseph, a delusional patient who thinks he is God, was set free and killed his social worker, who wasn’t informed of his dangers at all.

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How do these things happen? When criminals are convicted by the government, I always assume they are sent to well organized facilities, detaining them or making them better. These errors are incomprehensible and unforgivable. These facilities should be closed down after several of mistakes of this calibre. After one mistake a project should be started which focuses on the roots of the problem and the holes in the system. If a criminal can find a way out of that situation, than so can a team of experts beforehand, making sure it won’t happen. In this case, it did not only happen once, it happened several times, so when will the decision be made that this is not to be tolerated any more? The past proved the current situation is far too dangerous, not to mention the grief the families of the victims have to go through...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7738912.stm