Mental health legislation provides elaborate methods for dealing with the mentally disordered in private dwellings, reflecting the emphasis we place on our indoor culture. Yet it has also to deal with those who are in public places. The mechanism for dealing with this group of mentally disordered is, on the face of it, comparatively simple: legislation enpowers a police constable to remove a person from a public place to a place of safety if he considers that the person is suffering from mental disorder and is in immediate need of care or control. The person can be so detained for up to 72 hours. During that time he can be examined by a doctor and interviewed by an Approved Social Worker in order that suitable arrangements be made for his treatment and care. This power completes and tidies up matters: it completes them in the sense that it deals with public places rather than private dwellings and it tidies up matters in that it makes public places safer. Additionally it provides facilities for those in need of care. If it is agreed that such a system is required, and almost everyone does (see Parliamentary Debates 18 October 1982), one would have thought there would have been little or no debate about it.

This is not, however, so. Section 136 of the 1983 Act (it was Section 136 of the 1959 Act also and one of two sections to keep the same numerical position) has attracted a great deal of controversy, often producing a fierce polemic.