
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
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