Abolishing defensive homicide in Victoria was a mistake has left the law inflexibile in dealing with homicide offences.
Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disability are ‘managed’ by police, courts and prisons due to a lack of appropriate community-based services.
Kate Ausburn/flickr
Australia’s high rates of imprisonment and re-imprisonment of Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities is not only shameful, it is entirely predictable and preventable.
Cases involving mental health are mostly heard in Victoria’s Supreme Court. They are complex, costly - and rare.
Smith, Johnson/ Wikimedia Commons
Few things cause more public alarm than the notion of the “crazed killer” walking our streets. A common figure in newspaper headlines and current affairs shows, he (occasionally she) is often accompanied…