Health Department ‘fails’ mentally ill prisoners: Chief Justice

Supreme Court Chief Justice slams department’s ‘failure’ to provide suitable facilities for mentally impaired prisoners

Chief Justice Michael Grant has slammed the Territory Health Department’s “failure” to provide suitable facilities for mentally impaired prisoners as “clearly unsatisfactory”. Photo: EMMA MURRAY.

A MAN who almost set a high school teacher on fire in a “horrifying” attack at Charles Darwin University has been found not guilty by reason of mental impairment.

The Supreme Court heard Peter Skeen, 42, rode his bicycle to the university campus early on the morning of August 19, 2016, where he approached the victim and threw petrol at her.

The petrol splashed over the woman’s neck and upper back area and Skeen then started to flick a cigarette lighter in her “immediate vicinity” exposing her to “a real danger of serious harm through fire and resultant burns”.

In a victim impact statement tendered to the court, the woman said she continued to experience feelings of violation and fear.

In ordering Skeen to spend two years and six months in custodial supervision, Chief Justice Michael Grant described the incident as “a particularly cruel and abhorrent form of offending”.

“The circumstances would have been horrifying for the victim,” he said.

But in handing down his decision, Chief Justice Grant also slammed the Territory Health Department’s “failure” to provide suitable facilities for mentally impaired prisoners.

The court heard there were no secure hospital facilities in the NT and the six community-supported accommodation facilities in Darwin were all at capacity.

Chief Justice Grant said he had no choice but to send Skeen to jail because there was nowhere else for him to go.

“There is in this jurisdiction a dearth, or at least a shortage, of appropriate secure accommodation outside the prison context to house supervised persons subject to custodial supervision orders,” he said.

“While I am loath to make a custodial supervision order in circumstances where the effect of that order will be to commit the supervised person to a custodial correctional facility, that is an unavoidable consequence of the finding that a non-custodial supervision order is not presently suitable and the failure of the executive to make alternative facilities and services available for the custody, care and treatment of supervised persons.”

The Health Department was contacted for comment.