Out of sight out of mind.

Ashworth High Security Hospital is the subject of this investigative report by Niall Dickson following an allegation by a former patient that an 8 year old girl was repeatedly brought to the hospital and left alone with a sex offender. The hospital was reformed in the 1990s but staff were not equipped to cope with the changes and they lost control to the inmates. Reform of the harsh regime brought no corresponding improvement in therapies and most patients receive no treatment at all. The future of Ashworth is uncertain. Many of its patients do not need to be there but have nowhere else to go, while the most serious offenders would be better off in small units where treatment and rehabilitation would be available. Public opinion, however, is against such projects being situated near populated areas and to isolate the patients would make rehabilitation difficult. Ashworth is compared to Broadmoor (Berkshire), where a shortage of qualified nurses makes it difficult to administer a therapeutic regime, and to Rampton (Nottingham) and Blenheim House (Milton Keynes) which are both coping much more successfully with internal reforms.