Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Rehabilitation

  • AUSTRALIA

    Disability RC hears how criminal justice system fails people with disabilities

    • Justin Glyn
    • 02 March 2021

    Hearing 11 of the Commission has looked at how Australia’s justice system treats people with disabilities. The intersection between disability and the criminal justice system is, unfortunately, not a happy one.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Prisoners need action now facing COVID-19

    • Julie Edwards
    • 09 April 2020
    6 Comments

    We know that prisons are pressure cooker environments at the best of times. We can’t let them also become sites of mass infection, with potentially grave consequences, during the current COVID-19 health crisis. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Disability RC reveals important medical history

    • El Gibbs
    • 02 March 2020
    2 Comments

    Disabled people, and those that love them, have told the latest hearing of the Disability Royal Commission about their experiences in the health system. Neglect, abuse, violence all featured, with medical people and systems often talked about, not as caring health professionals, but as callous and cruel.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The anatomy of hope

    • Fiona Murphy
    • 18 February 2020
    5 Comments

    Over a decade ago, when applying to study physiotherapy, I carefully read through the application form. It contained a brief but troubling caveat: all students must be physically able to participate in the coursework. I felt nervous, even scared. The answer seemed clear cut to me, but would the university agree?

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Inmate internet access more than a prison perk

    • Nicola Heath
    • 10 October 2019
    7 Comments

    For a nation with such a significant convict history, Australians take a peculiarly puritanical approach to prisoner welfare. Punishment, not rehabilitation, is often viewed as the point of the justice system. We take a very dim view of anything that could be construed as a prisoner perk. One such perceived privilege is access to the internet.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Pope answers policies that suffocate hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 September 2019
    10 Comments

    The Pope's speech was newsworthy because in Australia sentences to a lifetime in prison without parole are becoming less contentious and more used. His approach to prisoners and their criminal behaviour is in such strong contrast to strands of Australian culture in which exclusion and the denial of hope are an instinctive response.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    A different approach needed for youth justice

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 September 2019
    4 Comments

    The Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass has published a damning report of the use of isolation for children in Victorian justice centres. Those acquainted with the administration of juvenile justice in Australia will find nothing new in the report. Therein lies its scandal.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The tweet smell of APS authoritarianism

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 12 August 2019
    5 Comments

    Should a public service have people with political, disagreeable opinions? No, according to the guidelines of employment in the Australian Public Service. The decision of the Australian High Court in the case of Comcare v Banerji is a salient warning to employees in the APS. Obedience, it seems, must be unquestionable and total.

    READ MORE
  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Combating crime by restoring relationships

    • Andrew Hamilton and Madison Rosaia
    • 26 July 2019
    6 Comments

    When devising policies for people on the margins, Australian governments seem always to settle on punitive measures. Although imprisonment has a place in penal policy, the focus should be on the persons who perpetrate crime and on those who are damaged by it. Penal policy is ultimately about ensuring just relationships.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to stop punishing the unemployed

    • El Gibbs
    • 21 November 2018
    10 Comments

    Australia’s income support system and employment services have shifted to an ever harsher regime of compliance and penalty, while failing to find work for hundreds of thousands of people. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    State of the death penalty in Southeast Asia

    • Erin Cook
    • 14 November 2018
    2 Comments

    With such a wide range of crimes under the death penalty banner, what will sentencing in the new Malaysia look like? And what timeline can be expected, given the government has a diverse suite of policy priorities for its first term.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Whatever happened to 'kindness to strangers'?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 July 2018
    14 Comments

    It has become clear that the brutal Australian treatment of people who seek protection is part of an international punitive policy. This is sometimes attributed to a failure of political leadership. But it may reflect a deeper cultural change in the Western attitude to strangers, seen in migrant and refugee policy, penal policy, international relations and the scope of the rule of law.

    READ MORE