Mental Health Act 1959

75 Further provisions as to prisoners under sentence

(1) Where a transfer direction and a direction restricting discharge have been given in respect of a person serving a sentence of imprisonment (other than a person detained in a remand home) and the Secretary of State is notified by the responsible medical officer at any time before the expiration of that person's sentence that that person no longer requires treatment for mental disorder, the Secretary of State may—

(a) by warrant direct that he be remitted to any prison or other institution in which he might have been detained ' if he had not been removed to hospital, there to be dealt with as if he had not been so removed; or

(b) exercise, or authorise the Prison Commissioners or, as the case may be, the managers of any approved school to which he might have been remitted to exercise, any power of releasing him on licence or .discharging him under supervision which would have been exercisable if he had been remitted to such a prison or institution as aforesaid,

and on his arrival in the prison or other institution or, as the case may be, his release or discharge as aforesaid, the transfer direction and the direction restricting discharge shall cease to have effect.

(2) A direction restricting the discharge of a person serving a sentence of imprisonment (including an order for detention in a remand home under section sixty-nine of the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933), shall cease to have effect on the expiration of the sentence.

(3) Subject to the next following subsection, references in this section to the expiration of a person's sentence are references to the expiration of the period during which he would have been liable to be detained in a prison or other institution if the transfer direction had not been given.

(4) For the purposes of subsection (2) of section forty-nine of the Prison Act, 1952 (which provides for discounting from the sentence of certain prisoners periods while they are unlawfully at large) a patient who, having been transferred in pursuance of a transfer direction from any such institution as is referred to in that subsection, is at large in circumstances in which he is liable to be taken into custody under any provision of this Act, shall be treated as unlawfully at large and absent from that institution.