FROM time to time, the Royal Court expresses its frustration at having to send people to prison when, ideally, they should be receiving care and therapy rather than a punitive sentence.

Such a case made headlines last week when a schizophrenic who had set fire to his flat in what appears to have been a desperate cry for help was jailed for two and a half years.

The court’s hands were tied in that there is no suitable secure but sheltered accommodation here to which this troubled offender could be sent.

It is clearly beyond the Island’s capacity to create facilities for all possible categories of offender whose conduct can be traced to mental health problems or other essentially non-criminal factors. If such facilities were created, they would spend a great deal of time empty and unused.

That said, the course of action that the court was constrained to follow is manifestly unsatisfactory.

In the interests of protecting the public, some form of custody, or at least close supervision, might be essential for a person convicted of arson, no matter what his or her motivation, but prison is a crude and unsatisfactory way of dealing with such offending.

Much as our prison regime aims to reform and rehabilitate as well as constrain and punish, La Moye is no suitable environment for someone whose crime stemmed from a medical condition.

Indeed, it is entirely plausible that incarceration will serve only to exacerbate this particular prisoner’s condition. At the very least, he is likely to have to endure a very unpleasant and distressing spell behind bars.

Given that Jersey cannot hope to have a form of custody to meet all circumstances, could this be an area in which we must look to assistance from the UK?

It seems probable that the reciprocal health agreement which was abrogated by the UK is on the point of being restored under more equal terms.

Would it be possible to ensure that the new arrangements take into account the needs of those who are dealt with by the courts and find themselves facing custody not because they are bad, but because they have been driven by impulses that they find it impossible to control?

There may be no easy answer to the problem so starkly highlighted by last week’s case, but the issue quite obviously merits urgent investigation. The present situation cannot be permitted to persist.