Legal

 

This page contains links to relevant articles and resources concerning issues relevant to legalities.

 

How much does imprisonment protect the community through incapacitation?

This Sentencing Matters paper reviews criminological research on the extent to which imprisonment protects the community through incapacitation. The report also examines the role of community protection as one of the purposes of sentencing in Victoria, focusing on the use of imprisonment as a means of incapacitation.

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The IAMHDCD & MHDCD Projects:

 

The over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Indigenous Australians) with mental health disorders and cognitive disabilities (MHDCD) in Australian criminal justice systems (CJS) is a matter of utmost importance to Government, policy makers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The IAMHDCD Project brings an Indigenous informed mixed method research approach to the study of this issue.

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Justice Reinvestment: a new solution to the problem of Indigenous over-representation in the criminal justice system.

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"Capacity and the Law" by Nick O'Neill and Carmelle Peisah [2011] SydUPLawBk 1.

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Review of health services complaints system

 

In April 2012, the Victorian Minister for Health announced that Victoria's health services complaint system would be reviewed by the Victorian Department of Health. The Health Services (Conciliation and Review) Act 1987 (Vic) establishes the complaints mechanism for users of health services and establishes the Office of the Health Services Commissioner, whose role it is to handle complaints under that legislation.

The review's terms of reference are to examine whether changes are required to the Act to:

 

• reflect best practice in health complaints resolution for all health service users

• strengthen the Commissioner’s role in improving the health system and the patient experience

• respond to a changing health service environment and changes in related federal and state legislation

• address any scope, policy or operational issues in the current legislation

 

The Department of Health released a discussion paper in June 2012, and public submissions were sought about the law and the complaints system.

 

The MHLC made a submission to the review, incorporating the submissions of Inside Access (a project of the MHLC) which provides legal services to people with psychiatric disability in correctional facilities in Victoria).

 

Our submission called for changes to the health complaints system to ensure it:

 

• is more responsive to complainants, in particularly people with psychiatric disability

• is robust and adequately empowered and resourced to provide a range of alternative dispute options for redress in individual complaints

• is best able to identify, investigate and address systemic issues

• is genuinely independent, and

• is open and accountable and reports fully and publicly to parliamen

 

Read the MHLC's submission here (17 August 2012).

 

For further information, see the Department of Health's review website.

 

To read the MHLC's tipsheet for consumers about how to make a submission to government, click here (links to relevant part of the MHLC's website).