The Greens have today welcomed the announcement from the Minister for Disability of the opportunity to review the effectiveness of WA’s only Disability Justice Centre but warned the review needed to ensure it was evidenced based and did not pander to misinformation or fear based campaigns.
Greens spokesperson for Disability Hon. Alison Xamon MLC said a well-structured review could ensure a better Centre and hoped it may serve to dispel some of the concerns which had been raised within the community.
“It is important to remember that the Disability Justice Centre was established by the previous Government for a very good reason, in that it had long been recognised that there were a small number of people with intellectual or cognitive disability being inappropriately detained in our prison system,” Ms Xamon said. “These people needed to be supported within a more therapeutic environment,”
“Indeed the failure to ever establish what is otherwise known as a ‘Declared Place’ had been long recognised as a serious contributor to the abuse of the human rights of people with cognitive and intellectual disability being detained on a custody order.
Ms Xamon said it was important to remember the individuals who are selected to be in the Centre had already been independently assessed as being appropriate to be there.
She said, despite this, there had been genuine issues which had arisen which it would be useful to highlight in order to improve the delivery of this important service.
“For example, during the time of the operation of the Centre it has become clear that amendments to the legislation are probably a good idea in order to facilitate best practice,” Ms Xamon said.
“I think it is also very useful to start examining whether such a service is best placed within a corrective services framework or is better off under a disability framework as initially envisaged.
“I also remain hopeful that this Government will ensure that we also establish Declared Places for people with mental illness as this remains an area of serious need and is long overdue.”