On March 8th, I attended a hearing at the Federal Court. The case of Velu Nadarajanv Mirc et al. is a case related to a request to defer removal. The H&C application is based solely on the applicant's establishment in Canada.…
Imagine being isolated because of a blizzard, and being a store owner you need to get more supplies, but can’t. This is what was going on with Justin, general store owner, until he found the town’s only hope the town bully, Billy. Billy would do the job, but he would also “tax” them by taking their items. Justin was getting real tired of Billy’s “tax”. When Billy was found dead, it was murder by Justin.…
One day he was suddenly taken back to Bournewood and illegally detained to the Severe Behavioural Unit because of a change in his behaviour. It was all due to a different driver who changed the usual route to the day centre where HL was supposed to attend once a week, as part of his placement, and to another person’s disruptive behaviour who made him feel upset. The family was informed about it and asked not to visit him. He was detained there from July 1997, indefinitely, under The Mental Health Act, “in his best interest”. In the meantime the family struggled to fight his case in the High Court, and that lasted for four months. In December the same year, at discharge, his state was terrible as a result of the abuses he had been subject of. “...he looks half-starved, with blackened toenails and scabs on his face”, describes the family. For them, the fight did not stop there, as they felt an injustice had happened. HL was not able to speak and therefore he could not protest and state where he actually wanted to be. His family recognised in this an abusive removal of HL from their family, and they knew they had to challenge the authorities as there were so many other similar cases. They took the case to The European Court of Human Rights at the end of 1998. They had been successful and, in 2004 the government had to change the law and introduced The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards which provides extra protection for people who…
This case is on appeal from the Federal Court of Appeal, where the decision to dismiss had been unanimous. The appellant Jekayannan Kanthasamy is hence, appealing the decision dismissing his application for judicial review of the denial of his request for humanitarian and compassionate relief under s.25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The respondant in this case is the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. This appeal was supported by intervenors including the Canadian Council for Refugees, Justice for Children and Youth, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture, Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and Parkdale Community Legal Services.…
In the issue of the unfairness in the law this can be seen. This is supported by the case of Brendan Dassey being forced into being charged for a crime he did not commit. In this case a 16 year old boy - Brendan Dassey is said to be an accomplice to a murder. The accused murder is Steven Avery, Dassey’s uncle. Dassey has learning disabilities and can only read at a fourth-grade level. Dassey is then interrogated alone, and then possibly forced by the police into confessing to rape and murder. He then abandons his statement but due to his unresolved confession he is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder that his uncle committed. This case shows how the legal system is not entirely correct and was unfair towards Dassey. It also displays the importance of legal support for people with mental disabilities need in the legal system. Whilst this case was in America in Australia it is still just as relevant. This can be backed up by the idea that if an accused person has cognitive disabilities they can be held indefinitely after they are found to be unfit to stand trial. These people can still held accountable for crimes even though they weren't guilty of committing them. This shows that there is a severe issue of unfairness within the Australian legal…
Frontline: New Asylums addresses the lack of effective policies to facilitate treatment and rehabilitation for the mentally ill within the prison system. The social injustice theoretical perspective addresses the need for social benefits, resources and protection of the mentally ill within the criminal justice system. The perspective provides equal access of resources to all people and is based on human need rather than political or social power.…
In the United States there are many laws protecting the rights and freedom of individuals with disabilities. Many of these laws state that a person with any type of disability should be granted the same treatment and services as if a person who does not have a disability, if the person needs extra services, they should be guaranteed these accommodations. Also, these individuals are considered to be active members of our community and they do not have any boundaries of where they are allowed to go. However, these laws and rights were not always in place and the treatment of people with disabilities were much different in the past. In the Documentary lost in Laconia it gives viewers and idea of what the treatment use to be for these certain individuals.…
There is a reason the U.S. Supreme Court Justices tend to quote Dickens frequently in their opinions: he usually some good points about the law. When it comes to legal fees, Dickens often pontificated as to whether it was ever possible to have a fair trial when money determined the quality of representation. Two hundred years later and on the opposite side of the Atlantic, this issue is still ripe for debate because regardless of all the services available; social equality in the law does not exist - particularly when it comes to the mentally ill or disabled. This paper will discuss the ethical issues surrounding legal fees, examine the options for representation available, and touch upon how this affects the mentally ill or disabled - a group…
“Inmates of American prisons do not have the full constitutional civil rights of an ordinary citizen, but they do receive some protection under the Constitution. Among these rights are the right to a punishment that is not cruel and unusual, due process, the right of access to parole and the right not to be discriminated against.” (Faranda)…
Mark George indicates in his article The Relevance of The Eight Amendment to the US Death Penalty in the 21st Century, that people with mental retardation faced high risks of wrongful convictions because they might make wrongful of false confessions. The case of Atkins v. Virginia is a clear example of cruel and unusual punishment. In 1996, the American Association of Mental Retardation declared Atkins mentally incapable. However, the court sentenced him to capital punishment. It wasn’t until 2001 that Atkins was exonerated of capital punishment due to his mental condition.…
Since World War II through the 1970s, many changes occurred in the United States correctional systems. Rehabilitation Model is a treatment program that was designed to reform the inmates. According to www.copower.org, “This model is similar to the medical model; it regards the person with a disability as in need of services from a rehabilitation professional who can provide training, therapy, counseling or other services to make up for the deficiency caused by the disability. Historically, it gained acceptance after World War II when many disabled veterans needed to be re-introduced into society. The current Vocational Rehabilitation system is designed according to this model. Persons with disabilities have been very critical of both the medical model and the rehabilitation model. While medical intervention can be required by the individual at times, it is naive and simplistic to regard the medical system as the appropriate locus for disability related policy matters”. Clear, T., & Cole, G. (2013) acknowledged that most of the states started building prisons and transformed the others in the correctional institutions between 1960s and 1970s. The rehabilitation model was conquered and the counselors or teachers administered the treatment programs at that time.…
The overall topic of my research paper is mental illness in jails. The population of individuals with a mental illness in jail with a mental illness is no small number by any means and the rate of individuals with a disability that are re-offenders is not compact either.…
The ongoing debate about how women prisoners ought to be treated relative to their male counterparts will be a failure if it does not lead us to reconsider the predicates of the largely ineffective correctional system now in operation ... working through the problems of gender in the correctional system represents a terrific opportunity to rethink global correctional objectives, assess the utility of the approaches that have been tried, and refresh our thinking about what is likely to prove useful in the future…
Prisons are slowly but surely becoming America’s new Asylums. An estimated 450 million people nationwide suffer from mental or behavioral disorders. These disorders are pretty common within prison populations. This extremely high rate of mental disorders in prison is closely related to several factors: the misconception that all people with mental disorders are a danger to the public, the failure to promote treatment, care, and rehabilitation, and the lack of access to mental health services. Many of these disorders are present before prison however, mental health disorders can also be developed during imprisonment due to human rights violations.…
In the past, and still occuring now, people with mental disabilities were often thrown into jail for the wrong reasons or while in jail were treated inhumanly. It states in the journal Prisons of the Mind: Social Value and Economic Inefficiency in the Criminal Justice Response to Mental Illness, “statistics show that between 30 and 40 percent of mentally ill individuals in the jails...had no criminal charges pending against them, while jails report frequently holding people with mental illnesses simply because there is no other place to put them,” this means that many people who need help and assistance for their illness are often thrown into a prison and neglected because that is easiest for the people in charge, rather than seeking out help…