The National Justice Project is leading an Australian campaign to advocate for appropriate first responders instead of police attending to people in a health or social crisis, especially those related to mental health. The human rights legal service is meeting with community stakeholders next week to help develop a campaign for more effective responses when people call Triple Zero (000) for mental and social support.
Adjunct Professor George Newhouse, National Justice Project CEO, said the campaign will echo findings from far too many coronial inquests on the urgent need for better and safer options to respond to mental health incidents.
“This national campaign will address the critical need to re-evaluate the role of police in these scenarios because the current approach is unsafe and endangers lives,” he said.
“In July, the National Justice Project hosted a forum with the Justice and Equity Centre, Redfern Legal Centre and Aboriginal Legal Service to explore avenues for change and accountability for police responses to mental health incidents. We unanimously agreed the current system and responses to acute mental health incidents are broken and, at their worst, are causing harm and death.
“Police do not have the training, skills, or experience to serve as first responders in situations where a health or social response is needed.
“Even the NSW Police Commissioner last week acknowledged a health response is often better suited to these callouts when she told a Budget Estimates inquiry of the need to ‘remove police from attending to mental health concerns when there is no immediate risk or safety of people’.
“The National Justice Project anticipates this common-sense approach will also be reflected in the long overdue state government review of how police respond to mental health crises.
“We must move to a more compassionate approach and a response model that doesn’t continue to fail and put lives at risk,” said Adjunct Professor Newhouse.
