Man kept in jail illegally amid psychiatric facility bed shortage

A mentally impaired man was kept in jail illegally and denied suitable mental health care because of a chronic lack of beds in the state's only psychiatric facility caring for prisoners.

That is the scathing assessment of a Supreme Court judge ruling in the case of a man, known only by the pseudonym 'SJQ', who was denied appropriate psychiatric care for about two months while detained at Hakea Prison.

A magistrate had previously found the man, who is in his 40s, unfit to stand trial to face an assault charge because of his treatment-resistant paranoid schizophrenia.

He was ordered to be sent to the Frankland Centre at Graylands Hospital for treatment

But that was not possible because the state's only facility for mentally impaired prisoners does not have enough beds to cope with soaring demand.

The 30-bed facility opened in 1993 and has not increased its capacity since, despite WA's prisoner population growing four-fold over that period, according to the judgment.

Justice Terence Palmer last week found officials were being forced to break the law by keeping people like SJQ in prison until a bed becomes available.

He rejected arguments from the government's lawyers that staff had "done their best" with the "limited resources available to them".

"Those charged with the care of mentally impaired people involved with the criminal justice system should not be placed in a position where a lack of resources forces them to act unlawfully," he wrote.

While SJQ was eventually moved to the Frankland Centre after an appeal was lodged, Justice Palmer said it was in the "public interest" to call out the treatment, which "reveals a systemic failure that should be decried".

Multiple warnings

State governments have been warned for years about a lack of beds at the Frankland Centre.

In 2018, WA's Inspector of Custodial Services warned the number of beds "has been inadequate for over a decade", and four years later found "inhumane" conditions amounted to breaches of human rights.

The facility operated at 99 per cent occupancy last financial year and had a waitlist of 18 people immediately before SJQ was ordered to be sent there, including another person in a similar position.

At one point, the waitlist ranged from 6 to 212 days, according to the judgement.

Debra Zanella runs community service provider Ruah, which operates the state's only mental health law service.

She said the judgment was not a surprise to anyone involved in the sector and argued the stigmatisation of mentally impaired prisoners resulted in the systemic failure identified by the judgement.

"In any other part of our health system we would not deny anybody that care," she said.

Expansion plans

Ms Zenalla acknowledged the government was working towards expanding the capacity of Graylands, with a nearly $200 million project including plans for 32 sub-acute male forensic mental health beds.

"I'd want to make sure that … we use the correct data to tell us now what we need, what we'll need into the future, and we make sure we have a timeline," she said.

A state government spokesperson said a contractor had been appointed in April as part of early planning work, which would allow the government to confirm a timeline soon.

"The state government is considering the judgement and will continue working across the justice and health systems to ensure people are accommodated in the most appropriate setting as soon as practicable," they said in a statement.