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Royal Commission for incarcerated inmates with mental health issues
by Ray Jackson 14 March 2014
T
his sorry expose of the abject disgrace in our caring for those with mental health problems within the so-called justice system in this country is but another big tick on the Australian government’s shame board. And there are way too many ticks on that board already. The West Australian gaol system has form in this area of locking up people who are judged to be unfit to plead. The last highlighted case was that of Marlon Noble, also in a WA gaol. The horror for the people in the unfit category. No-limit-gaol is not the answer. What is sorely needed is the stateof-the-art facilities whereby these individuals, mostly Aboriginal, can be properly treated. Such treatment requirements are just not possible in any gaol in this country. Governments need to do so much more to adequately finance these psychiatric institutions. Marlon spent 10 long years in the WA gaols on charges that were never proven and were later withdrawn by the alleged victims. Still he rotted in gaol until he was finally noticed and finally released on very strict parole conditions as if he was guilty. He was not! He needed help but he was trapped in an uncaring system that was totally incapable of doing anything for him, or for any other poor soul caught up in this horror. Whilst only the WA and NT numbers are given I can assure you that the other states and territories are similarly inflicted with their own criminal justice inertia in this tragedy of errors. I watched and listened very carefully to the interview with
Warren Mundine on ABC TV Lateline last night but whilst he professed empathy to those like Marlon and Rosie Ann Fulton (both pictured) - being held in a Kalgoorlie jail without conviction because she was declared unfit to plead to driving offences - there seemed to be no clear message of what he could do to solve their, and others, sorry situations. To suggest that he would include it in some future talks with the WA government on justice issues just does not give me, and I presume others, the confidence that he could take positive action in this matter. To suggest that he would raise the problem with PM Tony Abbott does little to excite me either. Mundine’s plan to divert juvenile offenders from detention to employment is a great leap forward for justice and for lowering the numbers of Aborigines being incarcerated in the juvenile centres and gaols. I applaud Mundine in this action but I just hope that these are real employment opportunities and not a form of government subsidised wage schemes to shonky bosses for cheap labour for 6 months only. I also applaud Mundine’s stand on the proposed changes to the
Racial Discrimination Act but on viewing Senator Brandis on ABC Q&A the other evening I hold little hope that the Abbott government’s push to make the changes can be stopped. The government needs to be able to vilify Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, asylum seekers (regardless of arrival method), those on welfare and any others they see the need to attack. Returning to the issue of Rosie and the too many others forced to share her degrading experiences I argue that we need a Royal Commission to strongly investigate and make mandatory recommendations to the Australian governments to forensically tear open the gaol systems and make them more humane for all inmates whilst coupling that push with an equally forensic investigation of our dismantled psychiatric care systems and remove those with mental health problems from the gaols, including all forensic patients, and place them in new and properly managed institutions where the emphasis is on care and not custodial punishment. Rosie, Marlon and all the others trapped in this criminal Dickensian system of neglect and ignorance deserve so much more.
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