Western Australia: Aboriginal Man With Intellectual Disability Languishes In WA P

Quote:


The detention for 10 years in the WA prison system of an unconvicted Aboriginal man with an intellectual disability is nothing short of a disgrace, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda said today.



Commissioner Gooda said it was hard to believe that Mr Marlon Noble had been imprisoned without being convicted and without evidence against him having ever been tested in court.



“I am concerned and deeply saddened to hear about the case of Marlon Noble,” Commissioner Gooda said. “He should not be in prison and should certainly have been linked into appropriate support services from the outset rather than being left to languish in prison.



“A mature society simply can’t allow people like Mr Noble to be punished for the inability of the disability and justice systems to provide appropriate community supervision and support for people with intellectual disabilities and mental illnesses.



“It is a tragic fact that people who fall under the jurisdiction of mental impairment legislation can spend longer in custody than offenders who have been convicted of similar crimes.”



Mr Noble was arrested 10 years ago for an alleged sexual assault but he has never been convicted of the crime. Instead, Mr Noble was imprisoned without conviction under the Criminal Law (Mentally Impaired Accused Act) 1996 for the last 10 years.

Quote:
Former disability support worker and friend, Ida Curtois, has been fighting for his release for almost ten years.

"It's a travesty of justice he is still in there, it's not until I splash his name all over the media that people actually start doing something and saying something," she said.

"Many of these organisations and Government bureaucracies that are saying this isn't right, this isn't right, I have contacted them over the last ten years and put Marlon's case to them and nobody wanted to know."


The Community Legal Service in Geraldton says the Act is applied if an accused person's mental impairment affects their ability to understand the criminal charges against them or the court process.

Principal solicitor with the service, Alison Muller, says the Act effectively takes away a person's right to justice.

"If that's the case they're declared unfit to stand trial and effectively that means they lose their right to clear their name of the charges while at the same time nothing's ever proved about their guilt, so they are in a limbo state basically," she said.

@white_swan53 Said

https://indigenouspeoplesissues.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9466:western-australia-aboriginal-man-with-intellectual-disability-languishes-in-wa-prison-for-a-decade&catid=54:australia-indigenous-peoples&Itemid=76



WTF ??
Criminal Law (Mentally Impaired Accused Act)

imprisoned Ten years with out ever going in front of a judge or being convicted .
After reading the whole article the question begs to be aked , Just how many hundreds or thousands of Mentally Impaired poor souls are rotting in prisons cells with out ever being convicted of any crimes there in that country ?

@Wellard Said

Doesn't that happen over in Guantanamo bay?.

@Demented Said

I actually like this part of the link posted.


“Where is the justice for Mr Noble who has been locked up for 10 years because we don't have services to provide a safe community treatment option?” Commissioner Gooda said. “I urge the Western Australian Attorney-General to urgently review Mr Noble's case.”

That Country,there's another good line

What you obviously don't see is that,in the time this man ,the poor mentally impaired one is getting 3 meals a day,has a bed to sleep in and a roof over his head every day and night of the week.

I seriously doubt that Mr Noble would be in a prison with a mental handicap like they describe in the link,yes he would be in an institution "For his own safety" and to protect him from himself.


I love it when people from overseas get hold of something like this and run with it,when you have actually no friggin idea of what the indigenous people of Australia are given each year by the Federal Government.

But enough said.

Quote:
"I've done 10 years in this prison and I'm an innocent man, people know that, my family know that and my lawyer knows it and I'm going to fight until they let me go."

Mentally impaired prisoner, Marlon Noble, describes his fight for freedom.

In 2001 he was accused of sexually assaulting two children in Carnarvon.

Mr Noble denies the allegations but has been held under the Mentally Impaired Accused Act for almost ten years because he was deemed unfit to stand trial.

Former disability support worker and friend, Ida Curtois, has been fighting for his release for almost ten years.

"It's a travesty of justice he is still in there, it's not until I splash his name all over the media that people actually start doing something and saying something," she said.

"Many of these organisations and Government bureaucracies that are saying this isn't right, this isn't right, I have contacted them over the last ten years and put Marlon's case to them and nobody wanted to know."


The Shadow Minister for Mental Health, Ljiljanna Ravlich, has called for the establishment of a court service which diverts people with mental health impairments away from the prison system.

"The objective of it would be to ensure that other options are explored and that people with a mental illness are not put into the prison system simply because there's no where to go," she said.

"We need to keep people with mental illness out of prison, we have too many people with a mental illness that end up in prison simply because there are insufficient houses and there are not enough people to undertake the supervision of people with mental illnesses in those houses."


Overhaul

At the moment, for people held in custody under the Act, there is no end date for their incarceration.

Ms Muller says that for some, this may mean a longer sentence than for someone who has been convicted.

"This means people with disabilities can serve more time in prison as innocent people, than they would if they were proven guilty," she said.

@white_swan53 Said

I wonder , should I have posted this thread in the racism forums instead of the current events forums ?

@Demented Said

Get it re directed if you wish I had my say and I'm over it now.

@Electric_Banana Said

1. He was probably 'railroaded' out of society for fear of his incompetence.

2. On the upswing and as Demented mentioned, prisons in Aussie and NZ are like vacation resorts complete with Playstation 3.

I don't think this man was detained in an Dark Ages - like cell but rather given free room and board in a comfy mental home.

Now if he had family outside that were supporting him this would be horrid but if he was homeless this is actually a blessing for the man.

@white_swan53 Said

The second link has more info and details about this case.
It says that his friends and family have been working for most of the ten years trying to get him out and back home .

@Electric_Banana Said

Yeah, this is really dependent on the situation. In this case he had loved ones outside that were taking care of him and miss him so he should've been released.

But some poor buggers have to sleep out in alleys every night and in that case this would've been a very generous and humane approach on part of the government.

@white_swan53 Said

Except the part where they will have to commit some sort of crime before the government will incarcerate them with out a trail or conviction .