|
About
IDRS
Legal
Help
About
CJSN
Priority
Issues
Education
Information
Useful
Contacts
Contact
IDRS
|
|
The Intellectual Disability Rights
Service (IDRS) and the NSW Council for Intellectual
Disability (CID) are concerned about what happens to people
with intellectual disability who get into trouble with the
law and people who might get into trouble if they don't get
some form of help.
CID and IDRS asked Jim Simpson, Jenny
Green and Meredith Martin to write report about this. The
report is called The Framework Report. It suggests ways that
things could be better for people.
Some of the problems for people who
get into trouble with the law are:
- There are not enough services to
help them.
- They often don't have enough
friends or family to support them.
- They usually have problems that no
one notices when they are younger or when they are at
school.
- They sometimes don't understand
what is happening when they are being interviewed by the
police or when they are in court.
The report suggests things that can
be done to keep people out of jail:
- We need to work out a way of
finding out if people who are in trouble with the law
have intellectual disability.
- Support people should be made
available to people with intellectual disability during
police interviews and when they have to appear in
court.
- The Department of Ageing,
Disability and Home Care must give people funding when no
one else will.
- Families need better support and
people with intellectual disability need more advocacy
and support.
- People such as psychologists need
more training to work with people with intellectual
disability in trouble with the law.
- Schools need to have better
programs in place to help people to not get into trouble
with the law.
- TAFE's need more courses to help
people develop living skills.
- People who work in disability
services and people who work in health services need to
work more closely together.
- All accommodation services for
people with intellectual disability should accept people
with intellectual disability who are in trouble with the
law.
- There is also a need for some
crisis accommodation and somewhere for people to stay
where there are programs to help them change some of
their behaviours.
- People with intellectual
disability of non-English speaking background and
Aboriginal people do not get treated fairly and this
needs to change.
Important Issues
- Government and community
disability accommodation services for need to be more
accepting of people with intellectual disability who get
into trouble with the law.
- Accommodation services usually
accept only people with more severe disability and what
is called 'high support needs'.
- The report says that the behaviour
that leads to people with intellectual disability
breaking the law also means that they have 'high support
needs'.
- A new agency should be set up to
help people change their behaviour and develop new
skills.
- This agency would have workers to
help people find somewhere to live. People would also get
help with other things such as dealing with their anger
and budgeting.
- The agency could also teach
disability workers about the criminal justice system. It
could also teach people working jails about intellectual
disability.
- More money is needed when people
are in crisis,like when they come out of jail and have
nowhere to live.
- More money for services needs to
be used to help people stay out of trouble.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Contact IDRS on 9318 0144 or 1800666
611 or
NSW CID on 9211 1611 or 1800 424 065
|
|
