Beacon Project

The Beacon is an innovative prison-based assessment and treatment service at HMP Garth, Leyland, Lancashire, for offenders with a personality disorder. A programme of interventions is aimed at improving prisoners’ psychological wellbeing and reducing their risk of reoffending.

The service forms part of the National Offender Personality Disorder Strategy and draws on the extensive experience and expertise within Mersey Care in the field of forensic personality disorder.

 

Psychometric Testing

This project seeks to evaluate the routinely collected self-completion psychometric tests completed by prisoners within the Beacon. There is limited existing data describing the clinical profiles of this prisoner population and this project seeks to address this knowledge gap. Initial findings suggest significant substance misuse and trauma within this population.

Deselection

This project seeks to investigate the processes surrounding prisoner deselection from the Personality Disorder Service at the Beacon via ethnographic methodology. Initial findings suggest that whilst both clinicians and officers share the same goal - to build trusting and rewarding relationships with the prisoner patients – their approach to achieving this differs greatly.