Category: Justice Health
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Use a gender justice lens across all aspects of health, Lancet Commission urges
Connie Musolino and Kristen Foley More consistent understanding of gender as a social construct by people across the health sector can help lead to better policies and programs and, ideally, healthier, more equitable populations, authors of a Lancet Commission report say. Recognising why and how there’s been a…
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Mental Health Behind Bars: Why Australia’s Prisons Need Policy Reform, Not Punishment
Mahnoor Muhammad Almost half of adults in Australian prisons experience a mental illness, cognitive disability, or high psychological distress . These individuals are not only overrepresented, they are underserved. Prisons, by their very nature, are not therapeutic environments, and yet they have become de facto mental health institutions. This reality…
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We shouldn’t lock up young offenders with neurodisability
Dr Fiona Robards and Professor Elizabeth Jane Elliott Barely a month goes by without news of children and adolescents who are imprisoned and being mistreated in youth detention. A new parliamentary inquiry is shining a light on this mistreatment. It’s investigating if youth detention facilities are complying with children’s human rights conventions, and…
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Locking up kids has serious mental health impacts and contributes to further reoffending
Summer May Finlay, University of Wollongong; Ee Pin Chang, The University of Western Australia; Jemma Collova, The University of Western Australia, and Pat Dudgeon, The University of Western Australia This article contains information on violence experienced by First Nations young people in the Australian carceral system. There are mentions of…
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Prisons still failing First Nations people, Justice Health conference told
Jeremy Lasek – PHAA Three decades after the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, a leading expert on the impact of incarceration on First Nations people told the PHAA Justice Health Conference, things have worsened, not improved. Professor Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law at University of Technology Sydney,…
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Raising the Age crucial for health and wellbeing of children and our future: ACT Attorney-General
Jeremy Lasek & Malcolm Baalman – PHAA The timing was impeccable. Just as the ACT’s Attorney-General, Shane Rattenbury MLA, was preparing to address the PHAA’s Justice Health Conference last week, the ACT Government released the results of public consultation which showed overwhelming community support for a proposal to raise the…
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Government promises action and money to counter Indigenous incarceration, Minister tells Justice Health 2021 conference
Jeremy Lasek – PHAA More action at a local level. More partnerships. More targeted funding. Greater research. And real targets to reduce the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in custody in the next decade. Opening the 2021 PHAA Justice Health Conference, Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Hon…
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2021 Justice Health Conference to focus on Evidence, Accountability, Action.
Jeremy Lasek – PHAA ‘Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.’ – Dr Martin Luther King Jr As our nation emerges from COVID lockdowns, it’s timely to reflect on the impact of some of the most severe restrictions imposed on our…
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PHAA applauds ACT for next step to keep kids out of jail
Malcolm Baalman – Public Health Association Australia In this day and age, it seems incomprehensible that primary school aged kids in school years four and five can find themselves locked up in Australia. Across Australia each year around 500 children under the age of 14 are locked away in…
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Indigenous Australians’ incarceration Gap widens during the pandemic
Introduction: Today on national Close the Gap day, the Public Health Association of Australia released a statement about the rising rate of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, detailing how it is a serious public health issue and human rights violation linked to ongoing systemic racism and discrimination…
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How well do the future leaders in Western Australia #ThinkPublicHealth?
Kelly Kennington, Hannah Pierce, and Elizabeth Connor The WA election is now days away. Some people, including the WA Opposition Leader, have already accepted the current Government will easily win on Saturday. But we shouldn’t count the votes before they’ve been cast – and we shouldn’t head to the polls…
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Congratulations to the ACT for committing to Raise the Age of Criminal Responsibility
Ingrid Johnston and Michael Doyle Recently the PHAA was pleased to join with the Raise the Age Coalition in congratulating the ACT Government for committing to raising the age of criminal responsibility during this term in office. This very welcome move has been long awaited by the sector, and…
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ACT offers hope in national campaign to raise the age of criminal responsibility
Toni Hassan The ACT government has committed itself to raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 in line with United Nations standards. In an emblematic victory for active minority government and cross-disciplinary advocacy, Labor this week voted for a Greens motion calling on it to commit to…