Sentencing Offenders with Impaired Mental Functioning: R v Verdins, Buckley and Vo [2007] at the Clinical Coalface

Abstract

In 2007, the Victoria Supreme Court of Appeal handed down what some describe as Australia's most sophisticated and subtle analysis of the relevance of psychiatric symptomology to sentencing. The court's decision in R v Verdins, Buckley and Vo [2007] radically altered the judicial sentencing landscape in Victoria, and in so doing, reshaped the interface between the criminal justice system and forensic mental health. This article explores the clinical implications of R v Verdins from within a forensic mental health framework, dissecting both the recapitulated “Verdins Principles”, and their liberalization of forensic mental health sentencing. By unpacking the often neglected nexus between correctional mental health and sentencing, the article then highlights the widening chasm in correctional mental health service delivery created by Victoria's sentencing reform. Finally, by better informing lawyers about what constitutes best-practice forensic mental health assessments, it is hoped that cogent evidence before the trier of fact may become more objective.

Key words:

• clinical implications
• forensic mental health evidence
• impaired mental functioning
• prison mental health
• sentencing
• Verdins Principles
• Verdins

Notes

1. Out of necessity, the following example is an over-simplification of the care pathway assessment for offenders presenting with impaired mental functioning.

2. Formally referred to as a Muirhead Cell following the “Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody” (1998).