Director of Public Prosecutions v Jesse Draper (a

Jesse Draper, the offender, was sentenced for a single count of arson committed while he was in custody at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. The offender pleaded guilty to the offence, which was committed on 15 April 2022. The offender set a fire in his cell, causing damage estimated at $20,000. The offender claimed that he set the fire in an attempt to gas himself, though he later told a psychologist that he set the fire to make a statement about his treatment in custody. The offender has a history of mental illness, including paranoid schizophrenia, and has been subject to multiple disciplinary incidents in custody. The court was required to decide the appropriate sentence, taking into account the offender's mental health, his plea of guilty, and the need for general and specific deterrence.

The court found that the offender's paranoid schizophrenia played a role in the offending, impairing the offender's ability to make calm and rational choices, making him more disinhibited, and impairing his ability to understand the wrongfulness of his actions. The court accepted that the offender's mental condition would weigh more heavily on the offender than it would on a person in normal health and that there was a serious risk that continued imprisonment would have an adverse effect on the offender's mental health. However, the court also found that weight should be given to the need to protect the community and for specific deterrence. The offender demonstrated little remorse for his actions and had two previous convictions for damaging property, one of which concerned the use of fire.

The court decided that the appropriate penalty for this offence was a term of full-time imprisonment. The offender was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 15 months, reduced by two months for the offender’s plea of guilty, to a term of imprisonment of 13 months, backdated to 4 December 2022. This sentence will be suspended after nine months on the condition that the offender enter into a Good Behaviour Order for a period of six months thereafter, during which time he is to accept the core conditions of such an order as well as the supervision of the Director-General and to obey all such directions as are imposed upon him in respect of mental health treatment and the treatment of his drug and alcohol problems.