Prison System continues to Fail the Mentally Ill in WA
Wednesday 25 September 2013 @ 9.52 a.m. | Crime
Despite reform efforts and recommendations from the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, WA Chief Justice Wayne Martin told the Rural and Remote Health Conference in Northam last week that research suggested that policies of "deinstitutionalisation" since the big Australian mental hospitals closed about 30 years ago had resulted in many people being "reinstitutionalised" in jails.
Despite serious reform resulting from the recommendations in Project 69 of the Law Reform Commission and ending in the assent of the Criminal Law (Mentally Impaired Defendants) Act 1996 (WA) and the Mental Health (Consequential Provisions) Act 1996 (WA), Chief Justice Martin said some people were detained indefinitely because their mental illness or disability made them incapable of the behaviour a structured, disciplined society demanded.
Though the crimes of some were so serious or they posed such a risk that detention was appropriate, there were possibly mentally ill offenders who were more a nuisance than a threat.
Chief Justice Martin said people who were a nuisance should be diverted to treatment within society.
Unlike WA, NSW has invested considerable funding in the rehabilitation and early intervention for at risk prisoners or prisoners who are mentally ill. As stated by then Attorney General, Greg Smith:
“Starting on July 1, Youth on Track will provide ‘at risk’ young people with services to deal with issues such as substance abuse, educational problems, anger, mental illness and family dysfunction. What’s groundbreaking about this program is that it will be staging much earlier interventions, providing services to reduce offending behaviour that are usually only available to young people once they have been convicted of an offence.”
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