The Court placed the accused on a custodial supervision order to reside at a Residential Treatment Facility, rather than a non-custodial supervision order with community-based SDA/SIL supports, on the basis that unchallenged expert evidence established that the accused's risk of violent reoffending could not be safely managed in the community without first addressing his forensic needs in a secure setting. The Court emphasised that where expert risk assessment evidence is cogent and unchallenged, the court should be slow to depart from it, and drew a clear distinction between disability support needs (manageable in the community) and forensic/criminogenic needs (requiring a secure therapeutic environment). The Court also criticised DFFH for a three-month delay in providing a critical RTF assessment report that reversed an earlier finding of unsuitability, and noted that the first RTF assessor may have misapplied the statutory criterion in s 152(1)(c) of the Disability Act 2006 by requiring less restrictive options to have been 'fully tried' rather than merely 'tried or considered'.
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