Officials forced to break law to keep mentally impaired man in prison

Key points

• A Supreme Court judge found officials unlawfully kept a mentally impaired man in prison for two months due to a lack of beds at the state's only psychiatric facility for prisoners. The man, known as 'SJQ', was deemed unfit to stand trial for assault due to treatment-resistant paranoid schizophrenia.
• Justice Terence Palmer criticised the systemic failure, noting the Frankland Centre at Graylands Hospital has not expanded its 30-bed capacity since 1993, despite WA's prisoner population quadrupling.
• The facility operated at 99 per cent occupancy last financial year, with a waitlist of 18 people before SJQ was admitted.