EXECUTIVE director of rights group Stand Up For Jamaica (SUFJ) Carla Gullotta has expressed outrage at the circumstances which resulted in the refusal by the Supreme Court to release six mentally disordered prisoners “detained for years” at the governor general’s pleasure because no institutions or family members would take them.

The six, who were represented by the Legal Aid Council and whose cases were heard between December 2022 and September this year, are among 14 for whom the council has filed applications before the courts “seeking a review of each applicant’s detention and their potential release with or without conditions”.

But Supreme Court judge Justice Leighton Pusey refused the applications, stating that “while the court has the authority to release the applicants, with or without conditions, it has chosen not to exercise the authority in this case”.

The decision, he said, was “driven by the absence of any sufficient evidence demonstrating that the applicants would be released into conditions favourable to their needs”.

He said the court remains “hopeful that this judgment may reach individuals or organisations willing to offer support to the applicants”.

On Tuesday, Gullotta, whose organisation has been at the centre of advocacy that mentally ill individuals shoud not be held in State correctional facilities, said, “The ruling has emphasised once again that somebody who is mentally ill should not be detained.”

“The idea of incarcerating a mentally ill person is crazy because, if somebody is not fit to plead, how are they fit to pay the penalty?” she said before going on to note that the best legal representation is often not provided for such individuals.

“It is a real problem, Stand Up Jamaica has been working to release some of them and it is really difficult. Firstly, when the detention is so long, you can’t find the documents, you can’t seem to find the records, the dockets are lost and you cannot find the families, at times,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

“The other issue is when you ask the family to take back somebody that has been away for such a long time they are reluctant because they are poor people, so you cannot just decide to send them home. The ones we were working with, when finally free, Stand Up has been assisting them for years helping to pay the rent, buy the Pampers, the health care. So, to put all the burden on poor families makes a striking problem,” she stated.

She, in the meantime, questioned why no attempt was made to place the applicants at Bellevue Hospital in the Corporate Area or other shelters. Bellevue Hospital is the designated public psychiatric facility where mentally ill defendants should be detained. However, this responsibility was shifted onto the shoulders of the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) in the 1970s and has not been corrected.

“I am not going to judge the judge because sending somebody who is mentally ill out without any form of assistance is a huge problem. This is why I want, one more time, to advocate that there must be a different policy because those people are really left behind. It is really shocking. I see this thing as one of the most outrageous You cannot do this. I am really broken-hearted. Let’s do something. Let’s advocate,” Gullotta pleaded.

Also on Tuesday, former executive director of the Legal Aid Council Hugh Faulkner said the situation is one which has dogged the entity’s efforts.

“When I was there at the Legal Aid Council it was the hardest thing [to get placement for mentally ill detainees upon release],” he said, in relating an instance in which he had to make a personal appeal to a State-run infirmary on behalf of a mentally ill inmate.

“We had made an application to relist a matter that had fallen off the court list for a mentally ill person and when we got to court, the family member was unwilling to take the person, so we had to ask the court to adjourn and during that time I went to the infirmary in Savanna-la-Mar and the matron there was quite accommodating and agreed to come to court to accept the gentleman, and they did,” Faulkner recalled.

“There may also be the situation where there may be some nursing homes that may be willing to accept persons who are mentally ill, depending on their condition, and this is something the State could consider paying for on a monthly basis,” he suggested, adding, “that is one of the main challenges because the court does not wish to put you on the road, [as] you would be both homeless and mentally ill”.

Department of Corrections officials in 2020 said there were some 300 mentally challenged persons in conflict with the law who were being housed at three penal institutions, with close to half of them listed as “awaiting trial”.

In February this year, the Observer reported that the transfer of some 50 mentally ill prisoners from St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre to Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre in Kingston had swelled the ranks of inmates diagnosed with mental disorders housed at the latter to more than 200.

The disclosure was made by Dr Myo Oo, a sessional consultant psychiatrist with the Department of Correctional Services, when he took the stand in the trial of Lieutenant Kyodia Burnett, the former Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) physiotherapist who stabbed his attorney-at-law wife Nordraka Williams Burnett to death in December 2018.

The forensic psychiatric expert said while the death of former inmate Noel Chambers in 2020 triggered vast changes in the mental health services available to mentally disordered offenders at the Tower Street facility, the services there are still not up to his standard as the environment it offers can only qualify as 50 per cent therapeutic.

Justice Pusey, in handing down his decision in late September, was at pains to point out that the ruling was not to be seen as any indication by the court “that the conditions in the correctional facilities are good or ideal for the applicants.

“Rather, the court considers the correctional facilities to be a ‘less bad’ solution than releasing them without supervision and resources. In view of this, the court has exercised its judicial discretion to refuse the orders sought for the release of the applicants in the circumstances. While this decision to deny release is regrettable, it underscores the urgent need for systemic reform and the provision of appropriate resources. The court hopes that its recommendations are heeded and that tangible progress will be made to prevent such unfortunate circumstances in the future”, the senior jurist declared.

“The dearth of private and public resources which could accommodate these applicants, coupled with the unavailability of family members to assist, contributes greatly to the court’s position on this issue. Having reviewed the evidence provided by the applicants, the court is of the view that the applicants continue to be unfit to plead and there is no likelihood that, even with treatment, these applicants will ever be fit to plead. Therefore, the applicants remain vulnerable individuals within these correctional institutions and are solely dependent on the correctional services for care,” the judge continued in his ruling.

“The failure of the State to adequately address the issues faced by mentally disordered inmates may suggest a missed opportunity by the State to better support some of its most vulnerable citizens,” Justice Pusey said, in calling for implementation of the recommendations of the Mental Health (Offenders) Inquiry Committee Report, which was released in 2020.

The committee was commissioned by Chief Justice Bryan Sykes to probe the reasons for the failures leading to hundreds of mentally ill people in conflict with the law being detained in correctional institutions for protracted periods, some as much as five decades with half listed as awaiting trial.