Submission to Australian Human Rights Commission re OPCAT in Australia Consultation Paper

PIAC’s submission in response to the AHRC Consultation Paper on the implementation of OPCAT in Australia identifies a range of issues that should be addressed both before and after the ratification of the Optional Protocol. This includes discussing potential gaps in the inspection and oversight framework, including police detention, mental health and alcohol and other drugs places of detention, aged care facilities and facilities for people with disabilities.

PIAC also suggests issues that may warrant thematic review following OPCAT ratification, such as young people and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in police custody, access to and timeliness of health care for people in immigration detention, places of mental health detention, the use of strip searches, isolation and restraint, and the treatment of people with disability in all types of detention.

PIAC also makes a number of recommendations about the formal processes that should be adopted in implementing OPCAT in Australia, the role that NGOs and civil society bodies should play, structures to allow input from vulnerable groups (including people in immigration detention and people with a disability), as well as the need for adequate resourcing of the national coordinating mechanism and other national preventive mechanism (NPM) bodies.