By Professor Bernadette McSherry

Yates v The Queen Case Page

In February this year, Judge Mark Taft of the County Court of Victoria referred to the year long detention in prison of a man with intellectual disabilities who had been charged with wilful and obscene exposure because of a lack of other accommodation for him as ‘an embarrassment to the administration of criminal justice’.

If the detention of a person with an intellectual disability in prison for one year because of the lack of a viable alternative may be considered an embarrassment, then the detention of Gregory Yates, a man with an intellectual disability, for over 25 years on the basis of a ‘fear’ that he might reoffend may be viewed as a debacle. The High Court put an end to the ongoing imprisonment of Gregory Yates in Yates v The Queen [2013] HCA 8, but the indefinite detention of people with intellectual disabilities continues to raise substantial questions. Continue reading →