In the criminal justice system, it is the role of the sentencing judge, not the mental health authorities, to decide the extent to which the public requires protection from a mentally ill offender and the type of sentence that will achieve this outcome. Where immediate imprisonment is imposed on a mentally ill offender, the ongoing psychiatric treatment is dealt with by the interaction of the Mental Health Act 1996 (WA), the Prisons Act 1981 (WA) and the Prisons Regulations 1982 (WA), and the sentencing judge and mental health authorities have separate and distinct statutory functions that co-exist harmoniously. Where an offender's mental illness is partly self-induced through illicit drug use, the mitigatory effect of the illness is reduced.
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