Disability at the Margins: Vulnerability, Empowerment and the Criminal Law, University of Wollong... more Disability at the Margins: Vulnerability, Empowerment and the Criminal Law, University of Wollongong, 27 November 2013, hosted by Legal Intersections Research Centre (organised with Stuart Thomas)
Prisoners with an intellectual disability (ID) are an over-represented group in custody, with stu... more Prisoners with an intellectual disability (ID) are an over-represented group in custody, with studies indicating this group is more likely to reoffend and be reincarcerated than the general prison population. While prisoners with ID share many of the same risk factors for recidivism as the general prison population, the lack of adequate disability support has been argued to be an additional key driver of recidivism for this group. This study aims to investigate reincarceration and factors associated with reincarceration after a first adult custody episode, including the impact of provision of general and specialist disability supports. The study used linked disability support services and custody data to identify a cohort of 1,129 prisoners with ID who were released from a first adult custodial episode in New South Wales (NSW) between 2005 and 2015. Over the follow-up period, the linked custody data showed that 72% (813) of those identified with an ID and released from a first adult custodial episode returned to prison, of which 76% (617) received no post-release disability support. This study found that 27% (308) of the study cohort had received a disability support service post-release from adult custody. Receipt of disability support was associated with a lower risk of reincarceration, while younger age and shorter duration of the custodial episode were associated with higher risk of reincarceration. The potential for disability support to lower risk of reincarceration highlights the importance of funding programmes that connect prisoners with ID to appropriate post-release disability supports.
Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, Apr 6, 2021
BackgroundStudies of the representation of people with intellectual disability (ID) in custody re... more BackgroundStudies of the representation of people with intellectual disability (ID) in custody report widely inconsistent findings that reflect variation in how ID is defined and the methods employed for identification. Using linked administrative data may be of utility in studies of the representation of people with ID in custody. However, this approach requires an understanding of the purpose of and factors influencing identification in disparate administrative datasets.MethodsThis study uses linked administrative data encompassing disability, health and corrections data for the year 2014 to estimate the prevalence of ID in adult custody and explore how ID representation within administrative data impacts prevalence estimates and what patterns of identification reveal about support service access for this group.ResultsThis study finds that 4.3% of the New South Wales adult custody population had an identified ID. Prisoners with ID were younger, more likely to have had a previous custodial episode and more likely to be Indigenous than the general prison population. Identification of ID across linked administrative datasets is uneven, which, if used in isolation, would result in variation in prevalence estimates according to source data.ConclusionsThe utilisation of linkage data from a broad range of health and support services including custody offers a comprehensive identification methodology. Inconsistency in the identification of ID across datasets indicates a potential disjuncture between prisoners with ID and support services, which may have relevance for efforts to reduce reincarceration of those in this population.
There is a growing body of research in Australia and internationally focused on ‘care-criminalisa... more There is a growing body of research in Australia and internationally focused on ‘care-criminalisation’: the criminal justice system involvement of young people in out-of-home care. Residential care – a model of out-of-home care where groups of children and young people live with paid staff – has been identified as a specific site of criminalisation for those who live there, in particular young people with cognitive disability and complex support needs. This raises significant human rights concerns and the need for greater systemic scrutiny. This article aims to make a contribution by focusing specifically on the institutional arrangements and characterisations that criminalise young people with cognitive disability in residential care through interrogating the official administrative records of two young people with cognitive disability who spent time in residential care and had contact with the criminal justice system as teenagers. Analysing case studies compiled from these records illustrates the ways that criminal justice intervention becomes justified and normalised for young people with cognitive disability in residential care. We critique the ways that institutional mechanisms and narratives serve to construct, coerce and constrain young people with cognitive disability in residential care. The specific forms of surveillance and control they are subjected to mean that their designation of ‘at risk’ almost routinely transmutes to ‘a risk’ to others, to themselves and to property and in the process their vulnerability and need for care and protection becomes instead a mechanism of criminalisation. Often disability becomes erased or at least overshadowed in administrative records, with care-specific and disability-related behaviour reinscribed as offending behaviour. Particularly stark in this analysis is the institutional and interpersonal violence that accompanies such criminalisation and the pervasive nature of this violence in the lives of young people with cognitive disability in residential care settings: violence they are subjected to by those responsible for their care and safety and violence as their response to the regulation of their circumstances – against property and staff and towards themselves.
Advances in police theory and practice, May 7, 2013
Police are at the frontline in attending crises and offending situations and events with persons ... more Police are at the frontline in attending crises and offending situations and events with persons with mental disorders. This though is too narrow a way of conceptualizing this aspect of policing. By far the majority of people with mental impairment have more than one disorder or disability. They are likely to have multiple and compounding disorders, impairment and disadvantages; this is what has been termed ‘complex needs’ by many in the field. We discuss the substantial expectations on police in handling situations with people who experience ‘complex needs’ using case studies from a dataset including over 2,700 persons in the New South Wales (NSW) criminal justice system whose criminal justice and human agency lifecourse data has been linked and merged. Many government agencies have developed difficult to traverse boundaries to working with or supporting persons experiencing multiple impairments, leaving it to the police to manage not just the criminal justice and community safety aspects of this group, but also their social and personal needs.
This paper reports on the development of the Our Ways to Planning framework. The framework is int... more This paper reports on the development of the Our Ways to Planning framework. The framework is intended as a guide for Australian organisations to work in safe and culturally appropriate ways to assist and enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability to make plans about their physical and mental health, wellbeing and future. The Our Ways to Planning framework is based on data collected via community-led research undertaken with Aboriginal people with disability and their family members and workers from five communities in New South Wales. Community mapping, an arts-based research method, was used to learn about the experiences of Aboriginal people with disability and their families regarding planning and access to services. Using iterative, thematic analysis, the research team identified core themes and concepts around which to structure the framework. The framework identifies three 'bridges' to organisational readiness for planning: knowledge, understa...
There is a lack of empirical research in Australia examining the lifecourse institutional costs a... more There is a lack of empirical research in Australia examining the lifecourse institutional costs associated with vulnerable people who are homeless. The study presented here has developed pathway costings using the Mental Health and Cognitive Disability in the Criminal Justice System (MHDCD) Dataset that contains data on lifelong interventions and interactions with all criminal justice and some human services agencies that are available for a cohort of 2,731 people who have been in prison in NSW and whose MHDCD diagnoses are known. This study’s purpose is to contribute to understanding the real costs associated with this group’s homelessness and criminal justice involvement and alternative policy and program responses. Merging data across criminal justice sub-systems and with relevant human services is a useful way to provide a broad, dynamic understanding of the trans-criminal justice and human service involvement of persons with complex needs. This study was supported by the Austra...
Disability at the Margins: Vulnerability, Empowerment and the Criminal Law, University of Wollong... more Disability at the Margins: Vulnerability, Empowerment and the Criminal Law, University of Wollongong, 27 November 2013, hosted by Legal Intersections Research Centre (organised with Stuart Thomas)
Prisoners with an intellectual disability (ID) are an over-represented group in custody, with stu... more Prisoners with an intellectual disability (ID) are an over-represented group in custody, with studies indicating this group is more likely to reoffend and be reincarcerated than the general prison population. While prisoners with ID share many of the same risk factors for recidivism as the general prison population, the lack of adequate disability support has been argued to be an additional key driver of recidivism for this group. This study aims to investigate reincarceration and factors associated with reincarceration after a first adult custody episode, including the impact of provision of general and specialist disability supports. The study used linked disability support services and custody data to identify a cohort of 1,129 prisoners with ID who were released from a first adult custodial episode in New South Wales (NSW) between 2005 and 2015. Over the follow-up period, the linked custody data showed that 72% (813) of those identified with an ID and released from a first adult custodial episode returned to prison, of which 76% (617) received no post-release disability support. This study found that 27% (308) of the study cohort had received a disability support service post-release from adult custody. Receipt of disability support was associated with a lower risk of reincarceration, while younger age and shorter duration of the custodial episode were associated with higher risk of reincarceration. The potential for disability support to lower risk of reincarceration highlights the importance of funding programmes that connect prisoners with ID to appropriate post-release disability supports.
Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, Apr 6, 2021
BackgroundStudies of the representation of people with intellectual disability (ID) in custody re... more BackgroundStudies of the representation of people with intellectual disability (ID) in custody report widely inconsistent findings that reflect variation in how ID is defined and the methods employed for identification. Using linked administrative data may be of utility in studies of the representation of people with ID in custody. However, this approach requires an understanding of the purpose of and factors influencing identification in disparate administrative datasets.MethodsThis study uses linked administrative data encompassing disability, health and corrections data for the year 2014 to estimate the prevalence of ID in adult custody and explore how ID representation within administrative data impacts prevalence estimates and what patterns of identification reveal about support service access for this group.ResultsThis study finds that 4.3% of the New South Wales adult custody population had an identified ID. Prisoners with ID were younger, more likely to have had a previous custodial episode and more likely to be Indigenous than the general prison population. Identification of ID across linked administrative datasets is uneven, which, if used in isolation, would result in variation in prevalence estimates according to source data.ConclusionsThe utilisation of linkage data from a broad range of health and support services including custody offers a comprehensive identification methodology. Inconsistency in the identification of ID across datasets indicates a potential disjuncture between prisoners with ID and support services, which may have relevance for efforts to reduce reincarceration of those in this population.
There is a growing body of research in Australia and internationally focused on ‘care-criminalisa... more There is a growing body of research in Australia and internationally focused on ‘care-criminalisation’: the criminal justice system involvement of young people in out-of-home care. Residential care – a model of out-of-home care where groups of children and young people live with paid staff – has been identified as a specific site of criminalisation for those who live there, in particular young people with cognitive disability and complex support needs. This raises significant human rights concerns and the need for greater systemic scrutiny. This article aims to make a contribution by focusing specifically on the institutional arrangements and characterisations that criminalise young people with cognitive disability in residential care through interrogating the official administrative records of two young people with cognitive disability who spent time in residential care and had contact with the criminal justice system as teenagers. Analysing case studies compiled from these records illustrates the ways that criminal justice intervention becomes justified and normalised for young people with cognitive disability in residential care. We critique the ways that institutional mechanisms and narratives serve to construct, coerce and constrain young people with cognitive disability in residential care. The specific forms of surveillance and control they are subjected to mean that their designation of ‘at risk’ almost routinely transmutes to ‘a risk’ to others, to themselves and to property and in the process their vulnerability and need for care and protection becomes instead a mechanism of criminalisation. Often disability becomes erased or at least overshadowed in administrative records, with care-specific and disability-related behaviour reinscribed as offending behaviour. Particularly stark in this analysis is the institutional and interpersonal violence that accompanies such criminalisation and the pervasive nature of this violence in the lives of young people with cognitive disability in residential care settings: violence they are subjected to by those responsible for their care and safety and violence as their response to the regulation of their circumstances – against property and staff and towards themselves.
Advances in police theory and practice, May 7, 2013
Police are at the frontline in attending crises and offending situations and events with persons ... more Police are at the frontline in attending crises and offending situations and events with persons with mental disorders. This though is too narrow a way of conceptualizing this aspect of policing. By far the majority of people with mental impairment have more than one disorder or disability. They are likely to have multiple and compounding disorders, impairment and disadvantages; this is what has been termed ‘complex needs’ by many in the field. We discuss the substantial expectations on police in handling situations with people who experience ‘complex needs’ using case studies from a dataset including over 2,700 persons in the New South Wales (NSW) criminal justice system whose criminal justice and human agency lifecourse data has been linked and merged. Many government agencies have developed difficult to traverse boundaries to working with or supporting persons experiencing multiple impairments, leaving it to the police to manage not just the criminal justice and community safety aspects of this group, but also their social and personal needs.
This paper reports on the development of the Our Ways to Planning framework. The framework is int... more This paper reports on the development of the Our Ways to Planning framework. The framework is intended as a guide for Australian organisations to work in safe and culturally appropriate ways to assist and enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability to make plans about their physical and mental health, wellbeing and future. The Our Ways to Planning framework is based on data collected via community-led research undertaken with Aboriginal people with disability and their family members and workers from five communities in New South Wales. Community mapping, an arts-based research method, was used to learn about the experiences of Aboriginal people with disability and their families regarding planning and access to services. Using iterative, thematic analysis, the research team identified core themes and concepts around which to structure the framework. The framework identifies three 'bridges' to organisational readiness for planning: knowledge, understa...
There is a lack of empirical research in Australia examining the lifecourse institutional costs a... more There is a lack of empirical research in Australia examining the lifecourse institutional costs associated with vulnerable people who are homeless. The study presented here has developed pathway costings using the Mental Health and Cognitive Disability in the Criminal Justice System (MHDCD) Dataset that contains data on lifelong interventions and interactions with all criminal justice and some human services agencies that are available for a cohort of 2,731 people who have been in prison in NSW and whose MHDCD diagnoses are known. This study’s purpose is to contribute to understanding the real costs associated with this group’s homelessness and criminal justice involvement and alternative policy and program responses. Merging data across criminal justice sub-systems and with relevant human services is a useful way to provide a broad, dynamic understanding of the trans-criminal justice and human service involvement of persons with complex needs. This study was supported by the Austra...
Linda Steele and Leanne Dowse, ‘Gender, Disability Rights and Violence Against Medical Bodies’ (2... more Linda Steele and Leanne Dowse, ‘Gender, Disability Rights and Violence Against Medical Bodies’ (2016) 31(88) Australian Feminist Studies pp 187-202
Abstract: We take as our point of intervention one category of violence which sits outside the forms of violence against women which are both currently prohibited by criminal law and the focus of violence against women campaigns: non-consensual medical interventions (or, as we refer to it, ‘lawful medical violence’). By drawing on critical disability studies, particularly feminist disability theory, we argue that lawful medical violence has been rendered socially and legally permissible because of the medicalisation of disabled women’s bodies and the related pathologisation of their behaviour and life circumstances. These processes sit at the intersection of gender and disability, drawing on gendered social norms of ability and sexuality to construct women with disability as genderless and dehumanised, and in turn depoliticising non-consensual medical interventions in these women’s bodies by reconstituting them as therapeutic and benevolent. In order to recognise and contest lawful medical violence as violence against women, mainstream feminist scholars and activists might consider turning to different legal, institutional and spatial sites of violence and challenging deeply embedded divisions and foundational concepts in law related to mental capacity.
Diversion from the criminal justice system pursuant to s 32 of the Mental Health (Forensic Provis... more Diversion from the criminal justice system pursuant to s 32 of the Mental Health (Forensic Provisions) Act 1990 (NSW) is increasingly being deployed as a key response to the issues facing people diagnosed with cognitive impairment and/or mental illness in the criminal justice system. The 'medical model' of disability, which is focused on disability as an internal, individual pathology, contributes to the marginalisation of people with disability, notably by providing a legitimate basis for the legal and social regulation of people with disability through therapeutic interventions. The scholarly field of critical disability studies contests the medical model by making apparent the social and political contingency of disability, including the intersection of disability with other dimensions of politicised identity (such as gender and Indigeneity) and the role of law and institutions (including the criminal justice system) in the disablement, marginalisation and criminalisation of people with disability. Applying critical disability studies to s 32 problematises the characterisation of the legal subject with diagnosed impairment and this provides a new basis for questioning the coercion of people with disability through the criminal justice intervention of diversion. An empirical analysis of the diagnostics, demographics and criminal justice pathways of a sample of individuals who have received s 32 orders provides some material foundations for a more politically and socially directed analysis of s 32 and for a broader reflection on the role of the criminal law in issues facing people diagnosed with cognitive impairments and mental illness in the criminal justice system.
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER ON THE RECURRENT AND INDEFINITE DETENTION OF PEOPLE WITH CO... more ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER ON THE RECURRENT AND INDEFINITE DETENTION OF PEOPLE WITH COGNITIVE AND PSYCHIATRIC IMPAIRMENT A Submission to the Senate Inquiry on the Indefinite Detention of People with Cognitive and Psychiatric Impairment Prepared by: FIRST PEOPLES DISABILITY JUSTICE CONSORTIUM An alliance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community organisations, disability, justice and legal researchers, Universities and Research Institutes. An initiative of First Peoples Disability Network (Australia), its strategic partners and supports. April 2016
Issues of violence against women are becoming increasingly debated in countries of the global Sou... more Issues of violence against women are becoming increasingly debated in countries of the global South, particularly as a human rights concern (Spratt 2013). This violence has its roots in gendered social, structural, and cultural marginalization; the feminization of poverty; and the legacies of colonialism seen in armed conflict and post-conflict displacement. These conditions differentially impact on women across multiple fronts including gender-selective abortion and infanticide, rape, domestic violence, honor killing, trafficking, forced prostitution, sexual exploitation, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and differential impact of HIV/AIDS (Vlachovd and Biason 2005).
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Abstract:
We take as our point of intervention one category of violence which sits outside the forms of violence against women which are both currently prohibited by criminal law and the focus of violence against women campaigns: non-consensual medical interventions (or, as we refer to it, ‘lawful medical violence’). By drawing on critical disability studies, particularly feminist disability theory, we argue that lawful medical violence has been rendered socially and legally permissible because of the medicalisation of disabled women’s bodies and the related pathologisation of their behaviour and life circumstances. These processes sit at the intersection of gender and disability, drawing on gendered social norms of ability and sexuality to construct women with disability as genderless and dehumanised, and in turn depoliticising non-consensual medical interventions in these women’s bodies by reconstituting them as therapeutic and benevolent. In order to recognise and contest lawful medical violence as violence against women, mainstream feminist scholars and activists might consider turning to different legal, institutional and spatial sites of violence and challenging deeply embedded divisions and foundational concepts in law related to mental capacity.
A Submission to the Senate Inquiry on the Indefinite Detention of People with Cognitive and Psychiatric Impairment
Prepared by:
FIRST PEOPLES DISABILITY JUSTICE CONSORTIUM
An alliance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community organisations, disability, justice and legal researchers, Universities and Research Institutes.
An initiative of First Peoples Disability Network (Australia), its strategic partners and supports.
April 2016