Campaign to stop jailing mentally ill without conviction grows MARK COLVIN: A national campaign to stop mentally disabled people being jailed without a conviction is gaining momentum. The
Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign estimates more than a hundred
people are in that predicament around the country and about half of them
are Indigenous Australians. Lawyers, academics and justice and welfare groups met in Melbourne today to develop an action plan. Samantha Donovan reports.
SAMANTHA
DONOVAN: The Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign says about 130
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people with a mental disability are
languishing in Australian jails without having been convicted of an
offence.
Some were born with an intellectual disability and others have acquired brain injuries, including foetal alcohol syndrome.
The
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice commissioner Mick
Gooda is involved in the growing campaign to stop these jailings.
MICK
GOODA: We've had Marlon Noble here today who spent 10.5 years in jail
and never been found guilty of anything, the charges have now been
dropped so it will never face court. So after 10.5 years in jail he's
now enduring parole-like conditions of release.
Now this is
happening across the country and we think it's just about time we looked
at it from a few perspective, one is a health perspective, another
one's a human rights perspective. This almost goes against just about
every human right we know around arbitrary detention and that's what
we're seeing here with people like Marlon and others.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Mick Gooda says Commonwealth and state and territory governments need to take action.
MICK
GOODA: The Commonwealth is our nation that signs up to international
treaties that have obligations, they have that responsibility but the
jurisdictions in Queensland, Northern Territory and WA are the ones that
have got to start saying well if people are not fit to plead there's
got to be alternatives to jail.
In the ideal world, Marlon would
have gone to another facility and eventually would have got out and what
you're seeing is a collision between the criminal justice system where
you're innocent until proven guilty and the mental health system where
you don't get out until you've proven that you're better. Well people
with acquired brain injury don't get better, so you've got a situation
where they can almost forever be stuck in the mental health system.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Patrick McGee is the coordinator of the Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign.
He says mentally disabled people at risk of coming to the attention of the police need to be identified early.
PATRICK
MCGEE: It's far more expensive to put someone in jail than it is to
provide support to them and what we also know is there's huge ethical
and moral issues about, well, if you don't understand whether you're
guilty or innocent, how can you understand the nature of punishment and
how can you understand that you have to redeem yourself in the eyes of
society and come out the other end and be a better person?
What
we need to do is provide people with support so that they're not going
into this situation in the first place. But if they do find themselves
in this situation, that we've got methods that we understand will teach
them to change their behaviour and understand the difference between
right and wrong so that they cannot go back to where they've come from.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Are you envisaging some sort of supported accommodation as an intervention in these sort of cases or…?
PATRICK
MCGEE: Supported accommodation that can be restrictive because some
people are a serious risk of harm to others, right through to drop in
support for people who just need a little bit of extra support to
understand how to get through the working week and, you know, get up in
the morning and have a good day and live a quality life.
MARK COLVIN: Patrick McGee, coordinator of the Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign, ending Samantha Donovan's report.
