Prison guards switched off the water to the cell of a mentally ill and dying man as punishment for his strange behaviour, joked that his repeated pleas for help were “entertaining”, and then left him unobserved to die at Silverwater jail from a treatable illness that was inexplicably missed.
The litany of failures that led to the preventable death of Simon Cartwright, a beloved brother and son, highlight the chronic under-resourcing of Australia’s secure mental health facilities and the dangers of using prisons to hold those suffering severe mental ill health, a coroner has found.
