Access to health care, especially mental health care, has played a major role in reducing crime rate in England. By increasing access to care and treatment in communities, the number of crime cases could go down since people can get help before they involve themselves in criminal activities (Department of Health and Social Care 2015). Offering broad access treatment and providing metal care is not only a compassionate way of dealing with societies but also a cost-effective way of minimizing the level of crime.
In the UK, one of the major barriers to treatment is the high costs of healthcare services. Many people who may want to access healthcare services lack health insurance, and even if available, the services tend to be highly priced thus becoming unaffordable to most individuals. According to Statista (2020), there has been a gradual decrease in the number of psychiatric beds available in the UK. For this reason, there was reduced health care between 2000 and 2010, a factor that likely triggered the increased crime in the country. According to European Institute for United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2010), between a similar period, there was a surge in the cases of crimes committed in the country. From the statistics, it is apparent that mental illness is a major factor that has increased the crime rates in the country and having effective mental health care could reduce the number of crimes cases in the UK.
According to the Office for National Statistics (2019), men are greatly overrepresented in terms of violent offenses. They also tend to receive lesser mental health care as compared to their female counterparts (Office for National Statistics 2019). It is also evident that the highest number of arrests between 2000 and 2010 were male, at a time when the number of mental health care in the country was dwindling.