The Community Services Directorate has released a new 10-year Disability Justice Strategy to ensure people with disability in the ACT have equal access to the Territory’s justice system.
Minister for Disability, Rachel Stephen-Smith said the Strategy would also support their right to equality before the law.
“The Strategy recognises that people with disability experience a greater need for legal support than many other people in society and face a range of disadvantages that make them more likely to come into contact with the justice system,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
“The Disability Justice Strategy recognises that equality before the law is not the current reality for too many ACT residents with disability,” she said.
“If we can improve the justice system for people with disability, we can improve it for everyone.”
Ms Stephen-Smith said that during the development of the Strategy the Directorate had looked at the evidence available through research, talked with people with disabilities and heard from people working in both the justice and service sectors.
“Everyone has a right to justice,” she said.
“The actions over the next 12 months will ensure that frontline workers can translate legal materials into accessible and easy to understand language.”
She said the Strategy would span both the civil and criminal justice systems and recognised that people with a disability could be victims, offenders, witnesses or would engage with child protection or civil proceedings.
The 44-page Strategy can be accessed at this PS News link.
