Penelope Brown

I am a consultant forensic psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Clinical Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. In both my clinical and academic work, I seek to improve my understanding of the way the law is used as an intervention in psychiatry and to inform policy-both locally and nationally. My current work, and the topic of my PhD, explores the prevalence of mental disorder in court defendants and the concept of fitness to plead.

In 2018 I spent 6 months working at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, funded by the Wellcome Trust, where I prepared a research briefing for parliamentarians on the age of criminal responsibility and joined the Parliament Choir!

Other policy-related work includes the Law Commission’s consultation on “Unfitness to Plead” and Ofcom consultation “Protecting participants in TV and radio programmes”.