AN Aboriginal woman born brain-damaged with foetal alcohol syndrome is stuck in limbo in a West Australian prison after the Northern Territory Government reneged on a promise to place her in a special-care home.
Former NT policeman Ian McKinlay, who is Roseanne Fulton’s adult guardian, said she had been locked up without conviction in a Kalgoorlie prison for 18 months.
The WA court system declared her unfit to be tried after the 24-year-old was charged with a driving offence.
Unfortunately, this type of case isn't uncommon, especially within the NT and WA. Many inmates, mostly indigenous, are caught and bound to the prison system or similar through bureaucratic injustices. This case in particular can help to highlight all of the obsticles that disadvantaged people will face when entered into the criminal justice system...and the 70% of in mates with a mental illness or mental disability will be able to concur.
Roseanne has had a mental disability from birth, is Aboriginal, is a women and requires friends and family to act on her behalf in legal matters and has happened to did herself in NT. This concoction of disadvantage presents Roseanne with an exceptionally weak case in relation to the law and pushes her into the corner of 'we don't give a shit about what happens to you' that the prison system inevitably creates for anyone of disadvantage, be it monetary, racial, the type of crime comitted etc etc etc.
Furthermore, the Australian government has a policy on housing indigenous Australians, that ensures that tht are houses as close as possible to their tribe, as their family and culture extends beyond what we as white Australians can comprehend. Again, as we see over and over, Roseanne (who could be any other person in this situation) falls outside if that category due to supposedly bureaucratic misfortune. Is it a system that can't encompass the disadvantaged? And if so, the ideals and operations, the whole need for a prison system that incarcerates blue collar crime, deals directly with just disadvantages peoples. Or is it a system that won't operate to support
Link to petition: https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/roseanne-is-facing-a-lifetime-in-prison-because-of-her-disability-stop-the-neglect
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