Most patients are eventually released from Broadmoor Hospital; however, they rarely return home directly. Despite its fearsome reputation, the average stay at Broadmoor is five to six years. After treatment, the majority of patients are sent to a low-security facility. After that, they progress to a community hostel before being fully discharged back into the community. Only around one in seventeen former patients are ever returned to a high-security unit, and those individuals usually become national news. 

Broadmoor has housed some very high-profile individuals over the years, including those who have committed the worst possible crimes. Ronnie Kray died there, and Peter Sutcliffe spent 32 years within its walls. Eventually, they told Sutcliffe he no longer needed to be there but, because of his notoriety, they were unable to move him to a less secure unit and sent him back to jail. One of Lee Rigsby’s killers is in Broadmore, and so is Robert Napper. A Who’s Who of Broadmoor patients and the horrific murders they committed is the stuff of nightmares, not just because the tabloids love to remind us of their murderous actions.

Last Saturday, news broke that passengers were being stabbed on a moving express train. The police immediately urged people not to speculate about who the perpetrator was. Unfortunately, social media is beyond such control; so, even the smallest scraps of information and video instantly appear, as they do when bad things happen. Whatever the unfolding horror, there’s always someone around who’ll whip out their phone and press record. Their footage is immediately uploaded because it has interest to the rest of us. This time, early news reports suggested there were two men involved, and both were arrested. Inevitably, we wondered who in their right mind would do such a terrible thing; it seemed incomprehensible.

By Sunday morning, the police assured us that it wasn’t terrorism and described the men in custody as “two black men, one British-born”. I don’t understand why we get these drip-drip snippets of official information. Presumably, because after Southport, the authorities fear street protests if the assailant is a migrant or Islamist extremist? Saturday’s alleged train attacker was additionally charged with an earlier train stabbing in east London. Inevitably, that and an earlier filmed machete incident in a barbershop led to questions about why he wasn’t stopped earlier.

Two years ago, Valdo Calocane went on a murderous rampage in Nottingham, killing two 19-year-old first-year students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar. Calocane had a history of serious mental health issues and, on conviction, was sent to a secure mental health facility indefinitely. Like Southport, senior politicians were quick to appear on the scene to give us their thoughts, which, as ever, were “with the victims”. This time, they assured us there would be more police around trains, a classic case of bolting the stable door.

Why do politicians love to be pictured at the scene of high-profile atrocities, always dressed appropriately, in black? Later, they meet the families and pledge their determination to “do something”. In that situation, I like to think I’d tell them to get stuffed. I’d want to know why the perpetrator was free to roam the streets and kill. More often than not, the assailant isn’t known to the anti-terror lot, nor were they in the Prevent programme. They are usually known to mental health services – which seemingly did little to stop them.

We don’t yet know anything about Saturday’s alleged perpetrator; he’ll have his day in court. But when it comes to mental health, including paranoid schizophrenia, I suspect risk is always “managed”, services are underfunded by the same politicians who release prisoners they shouldn’t have. Sadly, both things will inevitably lead to more horrors like Southport and Nottingham. Incompetent politicians, like David Lammy, should keep those black outfits handy.