The High Court dismissed J.B.’s judicial review challenge to the Mental Health (Criminal Law) Review Board’s decision to continue his detention at the Central Mental Hospital, finding that the Board acted lawfully and within its powers. The court also rejected his claim that his situation breached Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
J.B. was detained after a jury found him guilty but insane in 2002. By the time of the Board’s review in June 2007, the Board and his treating doctors considered that he no longer had a mental disorder or needed inpatient treatment. They favoured discharge subject to conditions, including living with his family, taking prescribed medication, attending clinical reviews and restrictions on work involving children.
The Board was concerned that the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006 provided no means to enforce discharge conditions or recall a person for breaching them. J.B. agreed to the proposed conditions. The Board declined conditional discharge and continued his detention, while he remained on temporary release: he lived with his family four nights a week, returned to a hospital hostel for three nights and worked as a warehouse operative.
The court held that section 13 allowed the Board to order further detention, unconditional discharge or discharge subject to conditions, but gave it no power to enforce those conditions or recall a conditionally discharged person. The court refused to imply such powers, saying that doing so would cross the boundary between interpreting legislation and making law. It also found that the Board’s preferred form of conditional release was not available under the Act.
Nevertheless, the court found that the Board had acted reasonably and within its jurisdiction by ordering further detention. It considered the temporary release arrangement a limited curtailment of liberty and, on the evidence before it, the best available regime for J.B.’s interests and the public interest. It held that his current circumstances did not violate Article 5 and that section 13 was not incompatible with that article.
The ruling concerned the Board’s decision following the June 2007 review. The judgment did not order J.B.’s discharge; it left in place the further-detention decision and the existing temporary-release arrangement.