Crimes Act 1914

Part IB - Sentencing, imprisonment and release of federal offenders  

Division 9 - Sentencing alternatives for persons suffering from mental illness or intellectual disability  

SECTION 20BT   Lesser periods of imprisonment fixed under hospital orders  

(1)    
Where a lesser period of detention is fixed under subsection 20BS(4) in relation to a person detained in hospital under a hospital order, the Attorney-General must, at the end of the lesser period, obtain and consider the reports of 2 duly qualified psychiatrists with experience in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness so as to determine whether or not to release the person from the detention.

(2)    
Unless:

(a) either of the reports of the psychiatrists recommends that the person not be released because of a continuing need for hospital treatment; or

(b) the person continues, at the end of the lesser period of detention, to be required to serve a federal sentence of imprisonment that the person was serving at the time when the hospital order began;

the Attorney-General must order the person to be released on such conditions (including conditions relating to release into the care of another person specified in the order) for the balance of the period of the hospital order as the Attorney-General considers appropriate having regard to the reports and to such other matters as he or she considers relevant.

(3)    
Sections 20BM and 20BN apply in relation to a person released from involuntary hospitalisation by order under subsection (2) as if:

(a) the order under that subsection were a release order made under subsection 20BL(1) ; and

(b) the references in each of those sections to detention in a prison or a hospital were references only to detention in a hospital; and

(c) the reference in subsection 20BM(5) to the period of detention in safe custody under subsection 20BJ(1) were a reference to the period of detention in a hospital specified in the order under subsection 20BS(1) .