Bureaucracy For The Insane: No Smoking At Rampton Not A Breach Of Human Rights

Rampton Hospital is a high security psychiatric hospital in the UK. It is an alternative for prison where a criminal is insane.

Residents or former residents applied in this case to be exempted from no-smoking regulations.

For instance, "normal" prisoners are exempt and can smoke in their cells.

Certain persons suffering an acute psychiatric state can be exempted at mental health hospitals. The rules for this are, however, so bizarre that they probably make the exemption pretty worthless to the beneficiaries. We will come to those in a minute.

The result of the case was failure. No-one at Rampton gets exempted. And the court has effectively decided that is ok. This is not what interested me in this case so go to the main title link if it interests you.

What interested me was the regulations that do apply if you get an exemption or, more specifically, the mind of the person that drafted them. Here they are:

"5.9 The patient may only smoke outdoors. The location to be chosen should be discrete as the sight and smell of a patient smoking may upset other patients.

5.10 The Nurse will retain the cigarette until the patient has been safely escorted outdoors, when the cigarette will be given to the patient and then lit by the Nurse who will retain the ignition source.

5.11 When the patient has finished smoking the Nurse will ensure that the cigarette is extinguished in a suitable ashtray and disposed of safely in an appropriate bin.

5.12 The staff and patient will return to the ward.

5.13 Once the decision has been made for the patient to stop smoking then the remaining cigarettes will be returned to the [patients'] Shop for destruction."

QUIZ QUESTION: What kind of mind devises such a regulation or would want to devote a single minute of their working life to drafting it?

My answer is that it is the kind of person who themself requires psychiatric help and may well be criminally insane. Mind you, they probably have a double first and flew through the civil service entrance proceedure.