Ministerial Cover Up at LB Prison Hospital

“The Law and Justice Committee of the Legislative Council is inspecting the Long Bay prison and forensic hospitals this morning after an urgency debate on the effect of the early lockdown on mentally ill patients” said JA Coordinator Brett Collins.

“The government has been condemned by the entire Australian mental health profession for that cost-cutting decision, and it promised to move all forensic patients into hospital conditions by the end of last month. That has not been done” said JA Coordinator Michael Poynder.

“The Minister for Justice Hatzistergos rejected Committee members’ requests for the Nurses Association and Justice Action to join the Parliamentary inspection as expert advisers. This leaves the mental patients to speak for themselves with guards present, despite the immense experience offered by both independent organisations. This arrogant abuse of power isolating patients from community support could never be justified” said Mr Collins.

“One of the patients, an Iranian citizen, has been rushed by ambulance to the Prince of Wales Hospital. He has refused his heart medication until the lockdown ends. The Iranian Ambassador Mahmoud Movahhedi has written to the Premier and Prime Minister saying the ‘allegations have become a matter of concern for the Islamic Republic of Iran’ and asked them to investigate alleged violations of his civil, legal and human rights” said Mr Poynder.

For comments:

Brett Collins on 0438 705 003
Michael Poynder on 0401 371 077

JUSTICE ACTION
Trades Hall, Suite 204, 4 Goulburn St, Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
PO Box 386, Broadway NSW 2007 Australia
T 612 9283 0123 | F 612 9283 0112
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Husband killer gets four years jail

Guilty of manslaughter ... Danielle Stewart has been sentenced to at least four years in jail for stabbing her husband Chaim Kimel to death.

A judge told the family of a man who was stabbed to death by his wife that they might think her punishment "inadequate''.

Danielle Stewart, 32, was found guilty in October of manslaughter after she stabbed Chaim Kimel, 55, twice in the abdomen with a knife during an argument in their Rose Bay apartment in August 2006.

Today at the Supreme Court, Justice Jane Mathews told members of Mr Kimel's family, including his youngest son, that courts could not impose sentences to reflect the pain and suffering of a family.

"I suspect that you'll regard the punishment that I am about to impose as quite inadequate to the extent of your loss...'' Justice Mathews told the family before sentencing Stewart to a maximum of 6 years and 4 months and a minimum of four years in jail.

Stewart could be eligible for parole as early as June 2011.

Mr Kimel's family declined to comment on the sentence outside court.

Stewart, who had been diagnosed with severe borderline personality disorder, had been drinking heavily on the night in question.

The court heard she had become extremely agitated after her husband changed the password to their company's website.

"The offender in her intoxicated state grabbed hold of the knife to stab the deceased without averting to the consequences,'' Justice Mathews said.

He found that Stewart had a good chance for rehabilitation as long as she received intensive treatment for her disorder.

Stewart had made several attempts on her life since the age of 12 and had suffered sexual abuse as a young girl, the worst occurring shortly after her mother died of breast cancer.

Justice Mathews found that Stewart was unlikely to reoffend despite the emotional and psychological issues that stemmed from having "more than her fair share'' of childhood trauma.

Slow release for mentally ill prisoners

This would occur over time and there would be no sudden mass release of prisoners: MHRT

As many as 2000 NSW prisoners will receive improved psychiatric care under a revision to forensic mental health legislation.

The changes will also secure the earlier release, under community treatment orders, of some people whose illness had previously made them unsuitable for parole.

Greg James, QC, president of the Mental Health Review Tribunal and architect of the reforms - already enacted and likely to go into effect from February - said the tribunal would supervise psychiatric treatment for prisoners and ensure it continued after their release. According to some estimates, nearly half of prisoners have some form of mental illness.

Court diversion programs are preventing about 1600 mentally-ill people a year from receiving a jail sentence, but the changes mean that for the first time psychiatric treatment for those who are jailed will be co-ordinated with treatment after release. Both will be under the tribunal's supervision, with individual treatment orders made by a panel comprised of a judge, a forensic psychiatrist and another mental health practitioner.

Mr James said about one-fifth of some 2000 forensic patients had been judged unfit to stand trial on account of their mental illness, while the remainder were serving their sentences. Of these people, about 1000 might otherwise be eligible for parole, but "the parole board does not regard them as capable of adjusting to community life," he said.

The new treatment regime would accelerate such people's parole, Mr James said, but this would occur over time and there would be no sudden mass release of prisoners. "The expertise is all in place" in community health services, he said. "I don't think you'll find community agencies will be stretched."

Philip Mitchell, the head of the school of psychiatry at the University of NSW and chairman of the NSW Mental Health Priority Taskforce, said the standard of mental health care in jails was improving. "It's not perfect but there's been a shift and very capable people are moving into forensic mental health," he said. Young doctors now competed for training places that had previously been impossible to fill.

Nevertheless, the legislative changes and a new forensic hospital to be opened at Long Bay but run by NSW Justice Health (a division of the NSW Department of Health) represented "a huge expansion" in psychiatric services, Professor Mitchell said. "The challenge for the system will be getting enough staff."

John Basson, the statewide clinical director of forensic mental health within NSW Justice Health, said many senior doctors had applied to work at the facility, but the agency was having difficulty attracting enough junior doctors. Mental health nurse recruitment was also problematic. "We're struggling like everyone else," he said.

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'Where justice ends, mercy begins'

Yeeda Topham walks free from court. "How on earth will I be able to do it?” she wrote.

A woman who killed her baby son when she jumped from the eighth storey of a building with the boy in her arms will walk free from prison.

Following 11 months in prison awaiting her sentence, Yeeda Topham, 41, was told today she would not need to serve any more time over the death of 21-month-old James in November last year.

WA's Supreme Court heard how Mrs Topham's severe depressive illness took complete hold of her in the months leading up to her son's death, triggered by a marriage breakdown and a belief the bond with her baby had somehow broken.

Poems written by the former teacher - one entitled "What it is like to lose the bond with your baby" - spoke increasingly of her fragile mental state, described thoughts of “damaging her baby” and her fear of the “cruellest fate for her little one in being left behind”.

Despite a spell at a psychiatric hospital, and other mental health care, Mrs Topham's despair reached breaking point last November 5, beginning with an attempt to kill herself and her baby by gassing them both in her car at a property in Roleystone.

When that attempt was unsuccessful, she drove to the apartment block in West Perth where she used to live with her estranged husband, climbed an outside staircase to the eighth floor and jumped off, with James in her arms.

Both suffered catastrophic injuries, with the toddler dying soon afterwards.

Mrs Topham was originally charged with the wilful murder of James, but eventually pleaded guilty to his unlawful killing in October this year.

Prosecutor Dave Dempster told the court depression at the breakdown of Mrs Topham's marriage had been exacerbated by post-natal depression following James' birth - illustrated in her poems.

"How on earth will I be able to do it?” she wrote in one.

Defence lawyer Paul O'Brien said Mrs Topham had been aware of her depressive illness, and attempting to treat it - describing it as a "black cloud" which eventually overtook her.

Sentencing Mrs Topham, Judge John McKechnie said the choice of a building where she used to live with James' father showed an "element of vengeance".

But the judge then said any punishment he could impose would not come close to the loss of her child, and the resultant effects, and said Mrs Topham would not have to serve any more jail time.

"This is a sad case whichever way you look at it," Justice McKechnie said.

"On the day, and many months before, you were suffering a severe mental illness.

"Taking a human life can never be condoned, and there are many victims of your crime.

"But human frailty overcame all your normal inhibitions.

"Where justice ends, mercy begins."

Depressed mum gassed infant son

The South Australian Supreme Court has heard that a woman was suffering from post-natal depression when she suffocated her seven-month-old son and gassed him with exhaust fumes.

Karyn Louise Kemp, 34, has been found not guilty to murdering her son Jacob at Cheltenham in January because she was mentally incompetent at the time.

A prosecutor told the court Kemp smothered the infant twice with a pillow, then left him in a closed garage with a car running for five hours.

The court heard she had taken 30 anti-depressant tablets and lay next to the car exhaust for the same amount of time.

A next-of-kin report has been ordered before the next hearing in February.

Pedophile John Reid jailed for 12 years

A PEDOPHILE has been jailed for 12 ½ years for sex offences against five children.

John William Reid, of East Doncaster in Victoria, was found guilty of more than 28 offences involving four girls and one boy aged between eight and 17.

In the Victorian County Court today, the 66-year-old was sentenced to 12 years and six months' jail for the offences that took place between 1990 and 1997 at his business and home.

Judge John Barnett sentenced him to a minimum term of eight years and placed him on the serious sex offenders' list.

A jury previously found Reid guilty of charges including rape, indecent assault of a child under 16, and sexual penetration of a child under 16.

The court was told Reid denied committing the offences and a doctor had diagnosed him as suffering bipolar affective disorder.

Mental illness cuts ecstasy smuggler's term

A man facing up to 25 years in jail for one of the largest seizures of ecstasy ever recorded in Australia has received a reduced sentence because of mental illness.

Zachariah O'Brien, 36, was found to have been suffering from bipolar disorder when he and Kings Cross drug dealer Robert Drury, 58, imported $200 million worth of ecstasy tablets hidden in the walls of a baking oven from Germany.

Both men were arrested by federal police on November 13 in 2004 when they picked up the oven containing 820 kilograms of the drug from a storage centre at Wetherill Park in Sydney's south-west.

O'Brien, from the NSW north coast village of New Italy, and Drury were charged with conspiring to import a large commercial quantity of ecstasy and with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

In June 2006, Drury was sentenced to 18 years' jail for his part in the importation with a minimum non-parole term of 11 years.

During this time it was alleged the pair obtained the drug from a Netherlands-based crime syndicate which has been since dismantled with convictions against three Dutch men and two other men in Belgium.

After spending almost four years in jail on remand since his arrest and conviction in a trial in August last year, O'Brien came before Judge Greg Woods in the Downing Centre District Court today for sentencing.

In sentencing O'Brien to serve 12 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of eight years, Judge Woods took into account the mental health issue.

He also took into account the time Woods had already spent in custody and said that period should be deducted from his non-parole sentence. Woods will be eligible for release in 2012.

The seizure in 2004 was regarded at the time as the largest ever shipment to have been recovered by Australian Federal Police and customs in Australia.

The oven ecstasy haul is now ranked by federal police as the third largest seizure of the drug after 1.2 tons was seizure in Melbourne in 2005 and last year 4.4 tons of ecstasy was recovered in Melbourne last year.

Taking the scalpel to DOCS

Overloaded on one front, the state's child protection agency fails all.

When the body of a boy was found in a suitcase last year, and a girl was later found starved to death, the State Government could no longer ignore the calls for a major inquiry into the state's child protection system.

People wanted answers: why wasn't the Department of Community Services there earlier? How could problems escalate to the point of tragedy?

As evidence unfolded at the inquiry under Justice James Wood, it seemed miraculous the number of child deaths was not higher. Only a fraction of the tens of thousands of children reported to DOCS each year because of fears about their welfare and safety is removed from their families. Most reported children remain with their parents. But these parents receive little or no help for their drug addiction, depression, domestic violence, or poor parenting skills - the problems that prompted someone to make a report to DOCS in the first place.

"People assume because a child is in the child protection system he or she is getting help, but usually they don't get anything, and certainly not the intensive family support they need," says Jane Woodruff, chief executive of Burnside, a non-government child welfare agency.

It is this wider story of state neglect - of a failure of DOCS to intervene early before problems escalate into crises or tragedies - that has given rise to calls for radical change in the child protection system.

Justice Wood, who will present his blueprint to the Government in a few weeks, has been urged to make the sort of sweeping changes that happened in Victoria, Queensland and West Australia in recent years. Some believe DOCS is beyond saving. No amount of tinkering or infusion of money, they argue, can fix what they see as an overwhelmed, defensive and ineffectual bureaucracy.

"DOCS needs to be broken up," says Louise Voigt, chief executive of the non-government child welfare agency Barnardos.

Woodruff and Voigt want the department shrunk, not expanded, and they want it to get out of the way of non-government child welfare agencies, such as Barnardos, the Benevolent Society, Wesley Dalmar and Burnside, which would play a much bigger role in a revamped system. They want a pared-down Department of Child Safety to replace DOCS. Its sole function would be to investigate the most serious reports of suspected abuse and neglect, to take court action, and to remove children if necessary.

And to stop the new department from being overwhelmed by reports, as now happens with DOCS, the threshold for mandatory reporting by doctors, police, teachers and child-care workers would need to be raised.

Voigt, Woodruff and many others advocate lifting the bar so that only children "at risk of significant harm" would have to be reported to a statutory agency. Under the current definition, police, for instance, report every child at a domestic violence incident, swamping the DOCS helpline in the process. No discretion is allowed.

In separate submissions, Voigt and Woodruff are also calling for a second agency - a Department of Families, Children and Communities - to be established to help all families and children, but especially those "in need". This department would take over much of the other work DOCS is supposed to do but does badly because of its child protection workload. These duties include early intervention and foster care, but the proposed new department would contract the non-government children's agencies to do on-the-ground work with families.

"The aim is to enhance the efficacy of prevention and early intervention services," says Woodruff.

It is a bold vision but not everyone thinks such a radical restructure is the answer. Splitting the roles of child protection and early intervention between two departments has been less than successful in Queensland, according to Paul Testro, a child protection consultant from Brisbane, who has watched Queensland's 2004 changes create barriers and turf wars.

But it is a measure of the profound disillusionment with DOCS that the non-government children's agencies and many experts want the department, if not scrapped, then curbed, and its workload shared.

It would not be the only player in child protection work, for example, under a plan put forward by three leading child protection experts, Judy Cashmore, Dorothy Scott and Gillian Calvert. Police, hospitals, schools and child-care centres would have an in-house trained child protection expert who would judge whether children of concern to their colleagues were "at risk of significant harm".

So judged, the children would be referred to DOCS for immediate investigation. If not, they could be referred directly to a non-government child agency for practical help.

At the heart of the call for radical change is an ocean of unmet need for help from poor and struggling families. But it is hard to quantify. Of the 286,000 reports to DOCS, many involve the same children time and again. The inquiry heard that mandatory reporters, such as doctors, would repeatedly report the same child until they provoked some action from DOCS.

It is possible that a relatively small number of families with many children account for a lot of the reports. DOCS estimates only 10 per cent to 20 per cent of reports are high-level cases that require immediate intervention. It substantiated reports for 14 per cent of children notified in 2006-07. By DOCS's estimates, at least 10,000 families need early intervention programs.

It is not that government has been unaware of the huge hole in service provision. Less than two years ago, DOCS launched a major early intervention program, costing $150 million over three years. Badged the Brighter Futures program, it is a partnership with non-government children's agencies. Parallel systems have been set up of DOCS case workers and non-government workers to share the 6000 targeted families.

Fourteen non-government agencies won tenders. It is relatively early days. But the experience so far of the Brighter Futures "partnership" with DOCS has convinced many that even if the department survives Justice Wood's report, it should hand over all early intervention work to non-government agencies.

"If all the Brighter Future services were delivered by the non-government agencies, the state would get more bang for its bucks," says Maree Walk, director of the Benevolent Society's Centre for Children.

Most agencies were scathing in their submissions to the inquiry about DOCS's ability to do early intervention work with families. Sadly for the many good DOCS child protection workers, the department's reputation is so tainted that many families will not accept help from an agency that could take their children away.

As well, the agencies claim DOCS has much higher staff turnover than the non-government sector, jeopardising continuity with families whose relationships with the department are meant to span two years.

"Their capacity to deliver Brighter Futures is woeful," says the head of an agency contracted to the program. "They have the same size team as we have in this area but deliver services to less than half the families we do. If we were doing half our contracted families we would be booted out. But there is no consequence for DOCS."

As well, DOCS's multiple role as gatekeeper, service provider, funder and contract monitor has made Brighter Futures unnecessarily cumbersome, the agencies say. The department insists 80 per cent of the families referred to the program must first have been reported to the DOCS helpline; 20 per cent of referrals can come directly to the agencies from community sources such as mental health nurses or child-care workers. Many agencies want the ratio changed.

As most agencies have discovered, Brighter Futures is far from early intervention work. Many families DOCS refers have entrenched and multiple problems; their children have been known to the department for years. By default, some agencies have found they are doing child protection work with high-risk families.

"It's been a shock," says Peter O'Brien, manager of child and family services at Wesley Dalmar. He dreads one of his workers ending up "with a baby in a suitcase". But if he refuses high-risk families, the most needy children will get no help. "We're in a dilemma," he says.

Justice Wood and his team face a massive task. At every turn the dilemmas are profound - whether it be raising the threshold for mandatory reporting of child abuse, or cutting DOCS out of direct early intervention work, or out of existence entirely.

What is clear is that the small number of child deaths is a barometer of a wider malaise. Many parents, usually poor, often unwell, are struggling to supervise and care for their children adequately. The children may not be in immediate serious danger. But their life chances are being eroded, and their health and cognitive development compromised the longer their families wait for help.

How to ensure more families get high quality services early enough, long before children need to be removed from homes, or are found dead, is one of the biggest challenges facing Justice Wood and his team.

NO RHYME NOR REASON

The following is extracted from Burnside's submission to the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services in NSW:

In 2004 Lisa, a sole parent, had three children under eight. She sought help from DOCS because she was depressed and felt she was not able to cope. She was told her circumstances were not serious enough to warrant a response.

In 2005, after a number of reports to DOCS that her children were neglected, the children were removed and placed in foster care. Lisa was left feeling alienated and angry.

Her children were restored after a couple of months with no further help offered. Her children were clingy, and frightened when she was away. She is engaged with a Burnside family support service, and doing well. She is bewildered about why, when she sought help, she was not able to access it.

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Life detention over hammer killing

Court sketch of Matthew Robert Steele

A man who bludgeoned a grandfather to death in Adelaide will spend the rest of his life in detention.

Umberto Crisante, 63, was killed with a hammer in the garden of his house at Clearview in June 2006.

Matthew Robert Steele, 30, pleaded not guilty to murder because of mental incompetence.

The court heard Mr Crisante's wife, Maria, was with their four-year-old granddaughter when she found her bashed husband, who later died in hospital.

In a victim impact statement read by the prosecutor, Mrs Crisante said she now feared being alone.

She had flashbacks of finding her husband lying on the ground covered in blood and said she could no longer sleep.

Defence lawyer Paul Charman told the court Steele's parents had tried to get help for their son before the attack.

But they did not dispute Justice Thomas Gray's order that Steele spend the rest of his life in a mental health facility.

Mother sentenced over her children's murders

Donna Fitchett sentenced for the murders of her 11 year old and 9 year old sons.

A North Balwyn woman convicted of murdering her two sons has been sentenced to 24 years jail.

The Supreme Court was told Donna Fitchett, aged 49, drugged and stranged her boys, 11-year-old Thomas and 9-year-old Matthew, in 2005.

She pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.

During the trial, her defence argued she suffered from severe depression, and did not realise what she was doing was wrong.

The Court heard that after the killings, Fitchett slashed her wrists and took an overdose, leaving a suicide note for her husband.

In sentencing, Justice Geoffrey Nettle said the nature and gravity of Fitchett's crimes were appalling.

He said, the idea of a mother killing her children was particularly shocking.

Fitchett will serve 18 years in a psychiatric hospital before being eligible for release.

Quote: A bit of a contradiction in terms her being found guilty of murder and not guilty of mental illness considering she has to serve “18 years in a psychiatric hospital before being eligible for release." Does the law want it both ways?

Insane Hours: solitary confinement cells

DEBORAH RICE, PRESENTER: It's insane. That's what critics are saying about a new routine that keeps some of the state's worst mentally ill patients locked up in solitary confinement cells for eighteen hours a day.

But there's not a lot of sympathy for the group; they're the inmates of one of the country's highest security jails - Long Bay. And why should any of us give a damn about the comfort of the murderers and other criminals there?

Well, the longer lockdown has been introduced, at least partly, because it makes staffing the prison hospital cheaper. But Australia's peak mental health organisation says it's a false economy and it's demanding immediate improvements.

The man at the other end of this phone line is articulate.

CALLER: We are a proud nation, proud citizens of a civilised country.

DEBORAH RICE: He's apparently well-educated and rational.

CALLER: Over $3,765 dollars a week, New South Wales and Australian hard-working taxpayers are paying for every patient inmate in Long Bay hospital.

DEBORAH RICE: He's also criminally insane and he wants your help.

CALLER: They are turning us into zombies.

DEBORAH RICE: The State's worst psychiatric offenders are housed in the hospital at Long Bay correctional centre in Sydney. Many have committed horrible crimes including murderers and sex offences, but as forensic patients they've been found not guilty due to mental illness. It's a high security facility and until recently the inmates were locked in their cells at 9:00 every night. But in April, their routine was brought in line with the general prison population, forcing them into their cells just before four o'clock in the afternoon. That means mentally ill patients now spend around 18 hours a day in isolation and they don't like it.

CALLER: It makes you feel frustrated, outraged, angry and depressed, which is not therapeutic.

BRETT COLLINS, JUSTICE ACTION: Do you have a sort of sense of, you know, of claustrophobia?

CALLER: I have, for the first time in my entire life. I have been placed, upon my request by the doctor, on Valium because I have claustrophobia and without some medication such as Valium I wouldn't be able to cope with the 18 hours locking in solitary confinement.

DEBORAH RICE: Advocates for the inmates say cost-cutting is to blame. Locking them away for longer means fewer prison officers are needed.

BRETT COLLINS: So what have you got in your cell when you're locked in solitary confinement?

CALLER: I have six concrete walls plus a couple of boxes which I have my legal documents in; clothing in it basically. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, except, I mean, of course there is a toilet and a sink.

DEBORAH RICE: Many of the inmates have signed a petition saying their human rights are being trammelled.

BRETT COLLINS: It's a very, very long time to be in a cell by yourself and with delusions and all the others problems. No, there's no question that what they're complaining about is occurring.

DEBORAH RICE: But a lot of the people who are in the hospital are there because they've committed some pretty awful crimes. Why should we care about their comfort?

BRETT COLLINS: They're human beings. These are citizens. These are people who have not even been convicted of the offence for which they were charged; and some have not even been charged. Now these are people who are the most vulnerable of our citizens. So if we as a community don't show them compassion, it says something about us as a community.

DEBORAH RICE: And those who work directly with the inmates agree.

RAY GREGORY, PSYCHIATRIC NURSE, LONG BAY HOSPITAL: Anecdotally, there's been more increase in incidents of aggression around locking down and opening up times; patients will become frustrated, you know, banging on doors, shouting through the windows; a kind of ... just sheer frustration at being locked in for so long, especially when patients have other symptoms. They may be suffering from internal voices, so auditory hallucinations.

DEBORAH RICE: The nurses say, under the circumstances, rehabilitation of the patients is impossible.

RAY GREGORY: It's not just a matter of giving patients tablets and expecting them to improve. That's a small part of mental health treatment. Social interaction and mental health assessments is a huge part of those therapies and they go hand in hand.

DEBORAH RICE: So, how do you feel?

RAY GREGORY: Nurses are expressing a lot of frustration around this. It's very difficult seeing a patient you've known for maybe months or even years to deteriorate significantly and be unable to intervene in those situations. To deliver care through a locked door isn't easy.

DEBORAH RICE: But you do have access to the patients after the lockdown, though, don't you?

RAY GREGORY: We'd have to alert officers to come down, that we needed a cell door opening. We'd have to maybe phone another ward, get those officers on to the ward where the patient was, and then wait 'til three officers arrive and then open the cell door.

DEBORAH RICE: That would be particularly difficult in an emergency, wouldn't it?

RAY GREGORY: That's right, that's right, and the client group that we deal with are particularly vulnerable to self-harm behaviour, to suicidal behaviour.

DEBORAH RICE: We asked to see for ourselves inside Long Bay hospital; instead, corrective services allowed Stateline into Silverwater Gaol.

EMPLOYEE, SILVERWATER GAOL: This is a 15 bed assessment unit.

DEBORAH RICE: So, why are you showing me this facility instead of the one at Long Bay?

EMPLOYEE, SILVERWATER GAOL: The routine that we're proposing to put in place in the new Long Bay Hospital very closely resembles the routine that's in place in this centre.

DEBORAH RICE: A new forensic hospital is being built next to Long Bay for the psychiatric inmates. Patients there will come under the control of the Health Department, and they won't be locked in cells at all. But it won't be ready for six months, and until then the patients will continue under the longer lock down in the prison, though many of them will be in new cells like this with TVs.

LUKE GRANT, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, CORRECTIVE SERVICES: We had more time out of cells and we reduced it back in the centre when we observed that there were high levels of agitation and adverse incidents occurring in the afternoons. So we reduced the time out of cells and found a corresponding and very positive response which was a decrease in self-harm and also assaultive and other disruptive behaviours.

DEBORAH RICE: So, was the change for therapeutic reasons or was it a work practices issues?

LUKE GRANT: Well, I think that's a case of two things coming together at the same time, so we were looking at reduced hours out of cells. But the decision for that was not based entirely on an economic rationale. It was also based on the fact that surveys of inmates indicated that a number of them preferred to be removed from the face-to-face contact. That if you're in the correctional system it can be fairly chaotic, and a lot of people like to have the time in their cells as opposed to being out when they're exposed to risks that they may perceive exist in that environment.

DEBORAH RICE: But inmates do have the choice of going to their cells to remove themselves from the rest of the inmate crowd?

LUKE GRANT: They can but can't lock their cells.

DEBORAH RICE: Are you seriously saying that inmates actually want to be in their cells for longer?

LUKE GRANT: I am. And what I would say from the literature is that what is useful is to have a variety of experiences. Some experiences that provide a lot of stimulation and opportunities for quiet time. We're trying to provide that balancing.

DEBORAH RICE: 18 hours in a cell doesn't sound like a good variety though.

LUKE GRANT: Um, well, 18 hours in a cell does sound like a long time.

DEBORAH RICE: According to some experts, it's way too long for psychiatric patients. Among them, Professor Paul Mullen, who's clinical director of Victoria's peak forensic mental health authority.

PAUL MULLEN, CLINICAL DIRECTOR, FORENSICARE: Left to themselves, the delusions and hallucinatory experiences become the sole way in which they understand and experience the world. The effect of this over any lengthy period is to potentially drive them further and further into their psychotic state.

DEBORAH RICE: The Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council calls the increased lock down cruel, inhuman, degrading. The mental health charity SANE urges the NSW Government to walk the walk as well as talk the talk on mental health services. And now the mental health council of Australia has written to the State Government demanding action.

DAVID CROSBIE, CEO, MENTAL HEALTH COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA: Having worked in prisons, I can tell you that attending to people's mental health problems early is a very good investment, because if you don't, you end up with greater problems in the prison, not only around management, but around the need for acute care for hospital beds and for more intensive supervision. Isolating them further by locking them up at four o'clock is only gonna make the situation worse and end up costing you more and costing the community more.

LUKE GRANT: Other than the conjecture that people have made about what might happen, we've seen no evidence of people being driven crazy or harming themselves or all of those other things that are suggested might happen under this regime.

DEBORAH RICE: There are a lot of highly respective people, though, who are saying that there could be long-term consequences. Can you disregard all of that opinion?

LUKE GRANT: I think there's been some misinformation about the environment that offenders will be managed in.

DEBORAH RICE: And what are the claims by the admittedly disturbed petitioners?

LUKE GRANT: The author has been someone who has been a vexatious complainant, who has provided the type of commentary that's included in those letters and that petition over a period of time, including the time that preceded the change of routine. And should evidence be brought to light that suggests that we are causing harm to people, then we will modify our approach accordingly.

Updated: 30/6/2008 3:30 (AEST)


Jail strike: officers protest lockdown procedures

Angry prison officers have accused the State Government of keeping inmates locked in their cells for extended periods to save money.

Around 100 officers went on strike at Long Bay Prison today to protest over current lockdown procedures, under which inmates are kept in their cells for 24 hours.

The measure is traditionally used to allow staff to attend training courses but the union representing the state's prison officers said this was no longer the case.

"It seems to be a cost-saving exercise under the guise of training," chairman of the NSW Prison Officers Vocational Branch of the Public Service Association, Matt Bindley, said.

Mr Bindley said inmates were locked down in their cells for 24 hours once every fortnight. Ironically, around 300 inmates at Long Bay had to be locked down today in response to the strike.

A Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman said the jail is being staffed by executive prison officers. "Security is not compromised at all," she said.

The department's industrial officer has logged a notice of dispute with the Industrial Relations Commission over the dispute.

The strike will last 24 hours before the union meets tomorrow morning to discuss further action.

The union also claims staff are being given insufficient pay upgrades and lack of computers to cope with the department's new digitised reporting system.

Related:

UN Torture Committee Blasts Australia
HRMU at Goulburn, inmates can be kept in inhumane conditions for an indefinite period. Last year, the NSW Coroner was also highly critical that mentally-ill people are placed in isolation in the supermax prison,” Mr Murphy said.

PARLIAMENT MOTION CONDEMNS LONG BAY PATIENT LOCK IN
The decision contradicts Premier Iemma’s own specific assurances about Long Bay to Parliament in 2004 as Health Minister. He also declared on becoming Premier that mental health was his “light on the hill” by which he would judge himself to have failed said Justice Action spokesperson Michael Poynder.

LINE IN SAND ON MENTAL HEALTH
The patients at Long Bay Hospital are now locked up at 3.30pm instead of 9pm, to cut costs, although all professional advice is that seclusion of these people will cause mental illness.

We owe prisoners more than jail
Prisons are too important to be left to jailers, for the simple reason that the standard prison magnifies social problems. It is a congregation of people with an accumu–lation of risk factors for crime.

Madness causing madness in prison hospital
“Fifty mental health patients held at the Long Bay Prison Hospital have from yesterday been locked in cells from 3.30 in the afternoon rather than the normal 9pm” said JA spokesperson Brett Collins.

Prison hospital lock-down: mental patients madness
“Prison authorities have ordered the removal of 28 officers from the prison hospital area as part of their ironically named “Way Forward”. This will lock patients into cells at 3.30pm instead of the current 9pm from April 2nd” said Justice Action Coordinator Brett Collins.

Judges depart Red Mass
Bishop Peter Ingham reminded the Judges about locking up the mentally ill in prison and that they should not be dishing out double punishment to them.

International Conference on Penal Abolition


The full agenda for ICOPA is now online, and pending any further changes, the line-up is looking like we're going to have a fascinating conference. With speakers coming to present papers from Brazil, Trinidad, Canada, Australia, USA, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa plus many more including the UK, we are really looking at a truly international conference.

'Munchausen-by-proxy' mother sentenced

A young NSW mother who injected excrement contaminated water into her six-month-old baby son has escaped jail because of her youth and mental health problems.

In sentencing the woman from Moruya Heads on the NSW south coast, Justice Hilary Penfold told the ACT Supreme Court the offence was serious with "potentially serious consequences".

"It was only a matter of luck that (the mother) didn't cause her child permanent damage or worse," Justice Penfold said.

The 21-year-old woman, who can't be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty in April to intentionally and unlawfully administering an injurious substance with an intention to injure or cause pain and discomfort on January 5, 2006.

Her baby son, then six months old, had been admitted to Canberra Hospital on Boxing Day, 2005 with a bruised left foot and doctors had inserted a catheter.

But 10 days later the young mother "injected a substance containing contaminated water and faeces into the (drip) line .... causing his medical condition to deteriorate dramatically", the court heard.

A psychiatrist had told the court the mother probably suffered from a condition known as factitious disease, or Munchausen syndrome.

People with the disorder deliberately produce illnesses for the sole purpose of assuming the sick role.

When they affect someone in their care it is classified as Munchausen-by-proxy.

Justice Penfold today said the mother "acted under a strong compulsion" because of the disease, when injecting her son.

While the offence was serious and attracted a maximum penalty of five years jail, full time custody was not appropriate in this instance because of her youth and mental health problems, she said.

Instead, the mother was placed on a two-year good behaviour order with strict supervision.

She also must continue treatment for what doctors describe as a borderline personality disorder and depression.

Her son, now aged three, is in the care of NSW community services, with his mother being allowed 30 minutes of phone contact each month.

The woman was genuinely remorseful that her action had hurt someone she loved so much, Justice Penfold said.

Corby case exploited by Channel Nine

Exploited by Channel Nine ... Schapelle Corby.

DRUG runner Schapelle Corby is on suicide watch in hospital. The 30-year-old lost 12kilograms in four weeks and suffered hallucinations and paranoia following the failure of her final appeal, doctors and her mother revealed yesterday.

Corby had to be taken from Bali's Kerobokan jail on Friday to the international wing of Sanglah hospital in Denpasar suffering depression.

Kerobokan prison doctor Agus Hartawan said: "We are concerned about her condition. She has deteriorated in the past few days, she gets depressed and depressed.

"She is losing weight. She is experiencing hallucinations and paranoia. Not because she is consuming any drug, but because of her emotional state - it's nothing physical."

Her mother, Rosleigh Rose, said: "It's depression. Everything has caught up with her."

Corby's father, Michael, died from cancer in January; her step-father, Greg, died from the same disease last year; she lost her final appeal in March; and her sister, Mercedes, was unable to visit while contesting her defamation case against Channel Seven.

"I don't know if she has lost any more weight but she is very thin - she is five feet, two inches [157centimetres] tall and she weighs 45kilograms," Ms Rose said.

"She has lost hope. She asks me how I can still have hope but I have to believe that there will be justice."

Corby was placed on anti-depressants two weeks ago. The paranoia and hallucinations had since worsened, prompting Dr Hartawan to bring in psychiatrist Lely Setyawati, who ordered the high-profile prisoner be hospitalised.

Dr Setyawati was concerned Corby would attempt suicide. She said her condition was "dangerous to her and to others" and recommended she be hospitalised indefinitely.

"There are many conditions, many stresses in her environment. It is serious," Dr Setyawati said yesterday.

Two police guards and two police officers are taking shifts guarding her in hospital.

Corby had been medicated since her hospital admission. It could take weeks for her condition to improve enough for her to be released from hospital.

Corby's lawyer, Erwin Siregar, believed she was depressed following the failure in March of her challenge in Indonesia's supreme court to her 20-year sentence for drug smuggling.

Kerobokan prison head of security Maliki said: "Erwin Siregar has told her about the judicial review rejection. Since then she's had trouble sleeping and didn't want to eat. That condition has made her very stressed."

Corby's elder sister, Mercedes, was by her side yesterday in the new hospital wing.

"When Mercedes was [in Australia] Schapelle deteriorated so much, but the Australian consulate didn't even tell me," Ms Rose said. "I had to fly in to get her a medical check. I also told the Australian consul that 'you are here to look after Australians, so do your effing job, mate'.

"She had lost 12kilos in four weeks and was just so depressed and no one gave me a call."

Ms Rose plans to fly to Bali this week.

Corby's hospitalisation comes as Channel Nine screens the first of a two-part, four-hour documentary tonight called Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth which the network claims will "challenge, indeed explode" the myths of her case.

Ms Rose was not worried about missing the documentary.

"I don't know if I'll watch it," she said. "I mean … what's it going to do? We'll just sit around the table and talk while all the current affairs shows are on … it's just all rubbish."

The program's creator Janine Hosking said she was disappointed by reports Corby family lawyers were considering legal action once Hidden Truth goes to air. "I admire many aspects of them actually, but I can't make the film that only the Corbys want you to see."

Quote: The low life vultures at Channel Nine have chosen to exploit prisoners' overseas just like the low life vultures at Channel Seven. If Channel Nine should defame Schapelle's family, lie or even make it worse for Schapelle then they should be sued for defamation. When are these public broadcasters to have their licences reviewed? Not satisfied to convict people using trial by media tactics but now endless lies and exploitation of these prisoners' suffering. Yet the true story written by Schapelle Corby herself cannot be sold. It is obviously a symptom of the broken down system that these corporate media vultures are then allowed to prey on the downtrodden and manipulate these people better because their story is hidden and so the rummers overtake the real truth. How much money do corporations want to make because of someone's misery? Does that make it worse for the prisoner? Why should prisoners' pay corporations?

Related:

Corbys' mother gets defamation payout
The mother of Schapelle and Mercedes Corby, Roseleigh Rose, has received a confidential payout from Channel Seven in settlement of her complaint she was defamed by its Today Tonight program.

Channel Seven guilty in Corby defamation
A Supreme Court jury has found Channel Seven guilty of defamation against Mercedes Corby.

Corby informant paid $120,000 cash, court told
A former friend of Schapelle Corby was paid "something like" $120,000 in cash by Today Tonight for a fabricated story, a defamation jury heard today.

Corby loses sentence appeal
Convicted Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby has lost a final appeal to have her jail sentence reduced.

Corby may serve 9 more years before transfer: Indonesia
Convicted cannabis smuggler Corby has served less than four years of a 20-year sentence.

Jail work could cut Corby's sentence
THE convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby may be eligible for a prison job that could shave years off the 20-year sentence she is serving in an Indonesian jail.

Detainee sues state over knife

WHEN a 16-year-old girl assaulted her mother with a knife, she was sent to juvenile detention.

She was just eight the first time she threatened her mother with a knife. She had also similarly threatened her foster carer, attacked a teacher and stabbed a fellow student. She appeared to have a fascination with knives, the Supreme Court heard yesterday.

Now 25, the woman is suing the state for allowing her access to the knife she used to kill a teacher, Scott Bremmer, in a cooking class at the Yasmar detention centre.

The court heard she was allegedly sexually abused as a child, had been assessed as retarded and suffering from intermittent explosive disorder. Since she was sent to Yasmar at 16, she has assaulted her solicitor, doctor, psychiatrist and two teachers, one of whom was attacked with a leather working tool in July 1999. Two days later, she was allowed to participate in the cooking class, despite staff allegedly raising concerns that she appeared "hyped up". Her handcuffs were removed and she was given cooking implements, including knives.

During a break, she allegedly showed "heightened interest in knives", and after returning to class, she fatally stabbed Mr Bremmer. She was charged, and eventually sentenced to a limiting term of 10 years under the Mental Health Act. She has been held in isolation for most of that time, has assaulted guards and tried to harm herself in custody.

Yesterday, in what Justice Stephen Rothman acknowledged was an unusual claim, the woman's foster mother began suing the state of NSW, on the girl's behalf, for compensation for her imprisonment. It was argued that government organisations knew she was violent, had a history of using knives and needed to be restrained. She was owed a duty to ensure she was adequately supervised and not given access to knives, her lawyers argue in their statement of claim. A psychiatrist found she failed to understand the offence or that it was wrong.

In 2001 the state pleaded guilty to breaching occupational health and safety rules at Yasmar in the supervision of the girl. It was fined $294,000. Staff training had since been changed, the court was told. The case continues.

Mentally ill man cleared of stabbing death

A man diagnosed with schizophrenia has been cleared of murdering a friend who took him into his home as an "act of kindness", with a Sydney judge ruling he was psychotic at the time.

Shaun Troy Slater, 37, admitted fatally stabbing and choking his friend Rodney Graham Smith last March at his Wauchope home, in rural NSW.

Mr Smith, 45, employed Slater as a carpenter some years earlier and the pair formed a friendship over a shared interest in the martial arts.

NSW Supreme Court Justice Michael Adams on Friday found Slater had stopped taking his medication and was suffering acute psychosis at the time of the killing.

"(Mr Smith) was not killed out of an act of wickedness, but out of an act of madness," Justice Adams told the court.

"Accordingly, I find the accused not guilty by virtue of mental illness."

Mr Smith had taken Slater in as a boarder, and asked him to move out after increasing concerns about his apparent mental decline.

Slater believed Mr Smith was trying to poison him and steal his money, and attacked him with a knife following an argument.

Mr Smith died from a stab wound to the chest and strangulation injuries.

After the slaying, Justice Adams said, Slater called police to tell them what he had done, and sat on the verandah with a cup of tea to await their arrival.

"He said later that he thought that would show the police that he did not wish to be violent towards them," the judge said.

Justice Adams said Slater appeared "floridly psychotic" during the ensuing police interview, claiming Mr Smith had "darkness in his eyes" and was stabbed for being a "cheeky prick".

"Without going into detail it's evident that Mr Smith, a friend of the accused ... acted largely out of charity (by taking Slater into his home)," he said.

"That adds an additional layer of sadness to the circumstances here.

"Of course, I understand that this can be no comfort whatever to the parents, family and friends of the deceased, who was killed because he did a kind and generous thing."

Mr Smith's parents wept and shook their heads as Justice Adams found Slater not guilty, offering his condolences for the "terrible nightmare" of their son's death.

While he had made some recovery from his illness, the judge said Slater remained a risk to himself and the community and ordered he not be released until deemed mentally fit.

Related:

PARLIAMENT MOTION CONDEMNS LONG BAY PATIENT LOCK IN
Long Bay Prison Hospital Locks up patients in cells for 18 hours a day “Today Greens spokesperson Sylvia Hale MLC will move for condemnation of the government’s decision to lock Long Bay patients in cells for 18 hours a day to reduce costs” said Justice Action spokesperson Brett Collins.

LONG BAY CORRECTIONAL COMPLEX HOSPITAL REGIME
Ms SYLVIA HALE [5.07 p.m.]: The Greens call upon the Minister for Justice to reverse the new arrangements at Long Bay prison hospital under which patients are locked in their cells from 3.30 p.m. until 8.30 the following morning. In effect, they are being held in solitary confinement in bare cells that lack even a television set for 17 hours every day. Until 2 April this year, the evening lock-up time was 9.00 p.m. The 53 prisoners subjected to this new regime suffer from severe mental illness. Their suffering will now be worse. Psychiatrists Professor Paul Mullen, Clinical Director of Forensicare, Victoria's peak government forensic mental health authority, in an email to Justice Action, which has been campaigning strongly on the issue, outlined the impact on mentally ill people of placing them in seclusion for long periods. Professor Mullen said:

The placing of mentally disordered individuals in effective isolation for a large part of the day is likely to be even more potentially distressing and disturbing than it would be to the general prison population.

In people with serious mental illness an important element in coping with their active psychotic symptoms is the interaction both with mental health staff and with other custodial staff and fellow prisoners. Left to themselves, the delusions and the hallucinatory experiences become the sole way in which they understand and experience the world. They lose both the reality checks provided by everyday social interactions and the opportunity to obtain some kind of therapeutic assistance through interactions with trained professionals. The effect of this over any lengthy period is to potentially drive them further and further into their psychotic state.

His disquiet is shared by another forensic psychiatrist, Dr Bruce Westmore.

A letter from a patient in Long Bay Prison Hospital to the Minister described the new regime as "maddening, un-therapeutic, destructive, oppressive, savage, barbaric, depressing and frustrating".

But prisoners and psychiatrists are not the only ones to speak out. Alison Peters, the Director of the New South Wales Council of Social Services wrote to the Attorney General and Justice Minister Hatzistergos on 16 May 2008:

NCOSS believes these changes are in breach of New South Wales and International standards for the treatment of people with a mental illness, including the Charter for Mental Health Care in New South Wales

The New South Wales Council of Social Services' fears are shared by the New South Wales Nurses' Association. The General Secretary, Brett Holmes, in a letter to Minister Hatzistergos, reiterated the association's "opposition to the practice of locking down of 'secluding' mentally ill inmates/patients", which they described as "a cost cutting exercise that imposes such deleterious consequences on the physical and mental health of people in your custody". The policy was "completely unacceptable" and deprived patients "of a basic standard of humane care". The Association's letter noted that "locking and isolating mentally ill patients in a room for such extended periods is in direct conflict with the Department of Health policy on seclusion".

The Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council supported the association's position. It cited Recommendation 150 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and Principles 1.1, 8.1, 9.1 and 20 of the United Nations Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness, as well as Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". The Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council contended:

…increased lockdown periods may be tantamount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Confining vulnerable or ill individuals in their cells from 3.30 p.m. especially during the warmer months, as well as depriving them of health care, is harsh and additional punishment to the sentence imposed.

Has the change come about because the Premier, the Minister and the Department of Corrective Services are callously indifferent to the welfare of prisoners under their control? Undoubtedly when thumping the law and order drum and trumpeting ever-harsher sentencing regimes, the Government is shameless when it comes to ignoring the rights and needs of vulnerable prisoners.

But there is more to this than sheer callous indifference. What we are witnessing is a simple cost-cutting measure. Under a policy ironically named "Way Forward", 28 prison officers have been removed from the Long Bay prison hospital area. Clearly, if one wants deliberately to understaff a facility, the easiest to go about it is to lock up prisoners in solitary confinement for hours on end, regardless of the effect on their already deeply damaged mental health.

The policy of locking mentally ill prisoners in their cells at 4.00 p.m. rather than 9.00 p.m., as was customary, came into effect on 2 April 2008. It is clearly the intention of Corrective Services that it continue for six months, until October, when a new forensic facility is completed at Long Bay. That is bad enough, but there is a deep unease shared by many that the real intention is for the change to be permanent. It is intolerable that anyone should countenance the existence, let alone the continuation, of this draconian and inhumane regime. The Greens call upon the Minister to end it immediately.

UN Torture Committee Blasts Australia
HRMU at Goulburn, inmates can be kept in inhumane conditions for an indefinite period. Last year, the NSW Coroner was also highly critical that mentally-ill people are placed in isolation in the supermax prison,” Mr Murphy said.

Shot man having psychotic episode

A Canberra man shot by police and left a quadriplegic was warned at least twice to stop advancing before a federal officer fired his gun, an ACT court has heard.

Jonathan Anthony Crowley, 40, is suing, for unspecified damages, the commonwealth, the ACT government and the police officer who shot him when he was having a psychotic episode in late 2001.

Mr Crowley believed he was Jesus Christ and had 1,000 years to save the earth when he took to the streets of Chapman in southern Canberra on December 11 wielding a 1.2 metre-long kendo bamboo stick.

He was shot in the neck after attacking an Australian Federal Police (AFP) officer who was trying to arrest him.

The ACT Supreme Court heard from an eyewitness to the shooting for the first time on Thursday.

Leonard Richter was working with his father installing an air-conditioning unit in a house in Chapman on the day Mr Crowley took to the streets with the stick.

Mr Richter told Justice Hilary Penfold he heard a commotion and rushed outside where his father told him he had been hit by a man with a stick.

He saw a police car arrive at the scene and two officers confront Mr Crowley.

"One officer attempted to spray the gentleman (Mr Crowley)," Mr Richter told the court.

"That didn't thwart his actions."

The court has heard senior constables Glenn Pitkethly and Ben Willis were first on the scene after leaving a command point just 800 metres away.

Mr Richter said Mr Crowley struck the officer with a "quite heavy, forceful" blow.

After Snr Const Willis fell into some bushes Snr Const Pitkethly tried to strike Mr Crowley with his baton which then "ended up on the ground".

Snr Const Pitkethly then took a number of steps backwards before pulling out his firearm, Mr Richter said.

"I distinctly remember hearing: 'Stop or I will shoot' at least two or three times," he said.

But Mr Crowley "just kept coming ... as if the officer didn't have a gun".

Then "the officer shot ... pulled the trigger".

Last week, former NSW Police assistant commissioner Norman Hazzard told the court the officers should have stayed in their police car and waited for back-up before confronting Mr Crowley.

Asked by Snr Const Pitkethly's lawyer, Peter Semmler QC, how he would have felt had the police "run off", Mr Richter replied: "I would have been very disappointed".

"Police are supposed to protect the public."

However, under cross-examination from Mr Crowley's lawyer, Bernard Gross QC, Mr Richter said he could have "unconsciously" absorbed some of the details from his father's account of events.

Thursday is the last day of the hearing for nine months.

The hearing will resume in late February 2009 due to a lack of civil court dates before then.