Drug users claim lighter jail terms
By Todd Cardy
April 04, 2007 04:41pm
DRUG users are taking advantage of South Australia's mental impairment defence laws to gain lighter sentences.
The head of the South Australian Parole Board Frances Nelson QC today said the definition of mental impairment was too wide under 10-year-old reforms by the SA Government and many criminals were escaping with lenient jail terms.
Ms Nelson said she was concerned at a stark increase in the number of drug users who used a defence of mental impairment for murder and lesser crimes such as graffiti vandalism and growing cannabis.
She said most were addicted to amphetamines and marijuana, and were not mentally ill.
"People who have drug-induced psychosis and who kill people are likely to be out in the community in a very short period of time, like two years, and are very often just as dangerous," she said.
"They should be dealt with as someone with a drug problem not as someone who is unable to accept responsibility for a crime."
Independent MP Nick Xenophon said government statistics released under freedom of information showed the number of people using mental impairment as a defence had jumped more then 3000 per cent since the laws were reformed.
From 1986 to 1995, only 11 cases used the defence successfully in SA courts, but that increased to 308 cases between 1996 and 2006, he said.
In 1995, law reforms transferred the power to set release conditions for people claiming mental impairment from the parole board to the courts.
Ms Nelson, who first questioned the reforms in 1992, said the parole board was powerless to keep people deemed mentally incompetent in jail longer or to monitor those people after release.
"People wave a piece of paper and say: 'You can't deal with me because the judge says I am mentally impaired'," Ms Nelson said. "That happens very often."
Mr Xenophon said he would introduce an amendment next month to toughen the laws and include a minimum six-month stay in a mental health facility for people who claimed the defence.
"Some people are treating the laws as a joke," he said. "I believe in some cases they are being rorted.
"There is something seriously wrong with the law and the way it is being used."
A spokesman for SA Attorney-General Michael Atkinson said the Government would consider Mr Xenophon's amendment but disagreed the law was being flouted.
The spokesman said the same mental impairment legislation was used across Australia.
