Detention in a psychiatric institution

Detention in a psychiatric institution

Where a client is detained in a closed psychiatric institution, careful investigation of the situation is required.  In most cases, it is likely that s 23(2) will not apply for one of several reasons:

• the client is not “imprisoned”, as the institution is a hospital not a correctional centre;
• the client was not convicted of an offence because he or she was found to be unfit to plead to the offence;
• the client's detention in the psychiatric institution is a result of a medical condition and has no “connection” with offences for which they had previously been convicted and imprisoned.