Inquest into the death of Duke Allan Wayne Schafer

36y · Male·Ligature strangulation

Duke Schafer, 36-year-old prisoner, was murdered by fellow inmate Carl Bloomfield in May 2020 at Woodford Correctional Centre. Bloomfield strangled Schafer in an unsupervised laundry area during a period when officers were conducting muster in an adjacent unit. The coroner found that while Bloomfield had been identified as a high-risk violent offender with sadistic fantasies and recommended for specialist psychological treatment and medication by sentencing judge, he consistently refused engagement. Bloomfield could not be compelled to accept treatment under mental health legislation as he did not meet criteria for involuntary treatment—he had capacity to refuse and did not have serious mental illness. Key preventability factors included: unsupervised laundry access (subsequently changed to locked with direct observation), lack of CCTV coverage in laundry (though coroner accepted direct supervision superior to camera), and staffing gaps during muster periods. QCS failed to implement adequate systems to track court-recommended treatments. The death was not preventable given Bloomfield's deliberate premeditation and choice of time/location, but infrastructure and systemic vulnerabilities were exploited.