Justice Action

Our Position on Mental Health

Justice Action is very concerned with the use of prisons to solve mental health problems. There is an urgent need to create community based care, drawing on the support of families and people with experience. Instead, the government locks away the problems, medicating individuals at the cost of over $200 000 a person per annum. The stigma that surrounds must be reduced so that members of the community that suffer from mental illness can be effectively treated while maintaining their dignity and rights. It is the position of Justice Action, with our allies and partners, that putting these disadvantaged individuals in prison is not the answer, instead further compounding the issues. The prison system should not be the de facto treatment centre for mental illness that it has become.

Justice Action became involved in the Mental Health arena in response to several Mental Health patients’ (consumers) pleas for help. Through significant consultation and research, it became apparent that a new strategy was required to defend community interests and consumers’ rights against the law.

We at Justice Action are involved with the researching and advocating of better policies and practices that are designed to benefit both consumers and the community. We stand up for and stand beside consumers whose rights have been significantly violated as a result of unlawful practices they may encounter within a forensic environment. Justice Action is currently involved in three major campaigns regarding the issues surrounding Mental Health.

The first campaign concerns the Long Bay hospital forensic consumer Saeed Dezfouli. Justice Action is providing Saeed with support and representation for his upcoming Supreme Court challenge. We are contributing to his case and we stand beside him as he expresses concerns about his treatment in Long Bay and argues that his rights are unlawfully being violated.

Our second campaign involves a current Supreme Court case against NSW Justice Health who opposed our ‘Just Us’ newsletter’s entry into forensic hospitals. The newsletter’s purpose was, and still is, to inform consumers about the political and voting process, and what the major political parties stand for. It advises consumers as to how these parties’ policies will potentially affect them, including the provision of responses from the major political parties regarding policy, such as whether consumers should be treated in Prison or a mental health facility.

The third campaign regards the planned Callan Park project. We argue for Callan Park to be turned into a community housing cooperative that is voluntary for consumers to use and access and is run by consumers, for consumers. The proposed Callan Park community-housing cooperative would reduce consumer homelessness, unemployment and risk of entering the justice system. This is due to it offering consumers affordable housing, community and employment support and a therapeutic treatment environment based upon community inclusion and engagement.

The Burdekin Inquiry into Mental Health in 1994 highlighted that mentally ill people detained by the criminal justice system are frequently denied effective health care and human rights protection. Procedures for detecting and treating mental illness and disorder in the Australian criminal justice system were found inadequate in all jurisdictions.[1]

Nearly 20 years later, mental health consumers in the criminal justice system are still faced with the same issues despite continued government promises.

[1] http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/inquiries/mental/senate05.htm