Decriminalising mental health: Submission to the Royal Commission into Victoria's mental health system
The Human Rights Law Centre has made a submission to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. The submission highlights that prisons are fundamentally ill-equipped to help people, especially young people, experiencing mental illness. The submission recommends that the Victorian Government should:
support people experiencing mental health issues to remain in the community rather than locked up behind bars in prisons;
provide more diversion opportunities and enact bail law reform to prevent the criminalisation of people living with mental illness; and
raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years, to stop the early criminalisation of children.