Prisoner could be declared ‘high risk offender’ under new Tasmanian laws

A Risdon inmate with a lengthy history of vicious and revolting assaults on prison guards could be declared a ‘high risk offender’ under new Tasmanian laws.

Risdon Prison, Tasmania. Picture: Zak Simmonds

A VIOLENT Risdon Prison inmate who has spent most of his adult life behind bars over dozens of vicious and sickening assaults could be declared a “high risk offender” under new Tasmanian laws.

In his newly-published judgment, Supreme Court Chief Justice Alan Blow said the court had the power to make such an order in the case of Nathan Michael Green.

The new classification was introduced by the government last year and gives the state power to closely monitor a person upon release from prison, including mandatory reporting and residential conditions, and the power for police to enter and search their homes.

Courts can also impose extra conditions like electronic monitoring, curfews, and prohibitions on entering certain places.

Green has a long history of violent assaults against police officers, guards and fellow inmates within the prison, and has a propensity for throwing faeces and urine in his victims’ faces.

The Crown made an “urgent” application for a high risk offender order, given Green could be released from prison this month.

In 2017, the Crown previously applied for the courts to declare Nathan Michael Green a “dangerous criminal”, a classification that would give the state the power to incarcerate him permanently, but this bid failed.

Now, the Director of Public Prosecutions has taken advantage of the new legislation, which creates a “second-tier scheme” for serious offenders who don’t meet the threshold for being declared a dangerous criminal, but still pose a risk to community safety.

Chief Justice Blow said Green had been continually incarcerated on cumulative sentences since 2011.

He said the DPP and lawyers for Green were in disagreement about whether the high risk offender legislation applied to him, based on whether his string of sentences had been served “cumulatively”.

Chief Justice Blow ruled that they had, and that the court had the power to make a high risk offender order.

Green’s lengthy criminal history includes his throwing faeces and urine into the faces of correctional officers on numerous occasions, stabbing a guard in the jaw with a makeshift weapon, breaking a policeman’s jaw by punching it, and assaulting six prison guards in the same year.

In 2014, he seriously injured a convicted murderer who’d made sexual advances toward him and threatened that he’d be killed, hitting his head and body with a cricket bat 13 times.

He once smashed a microwave glass plate over another prisoner’s head then used a shard to stab him in the chest.

A decision on whether such an order is made in Green’s case is still pending.

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