- Title
- Building a collaborative approach to policing in an age of disability human rights law
- Creator
- McNamara, Donna Marie
- Relation
- Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Vol. 28, Issue 1, p. 107-114
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jpm.12609
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the CRPD) is the most important human rights treaty for persons with disabilities, as it requires all States Parties to remove obstacles within society so that persons with disabilities can participate fully as equal citizens. To date, the CRPD has influenced significant reforms worldwide, especially in the areas of legal capacity, personal decision-making and independent living arrangements. However, there remains considerable potential to apply the CRPD as a catalyst for law and social change, including within the broad area of the criminal justice system.To date, research on the link between the CRPD and criminal law has centred on the trial process, and in particular, the future of capacity defences such as the insanity defence and fitness to plead (Bartlett, 2012; Gooding & Bennet, 2018; Gooding & O'Mahony, 2016; McNamara, 2018; Minkowitz, 2014; Perlin, 2017). This conversation began following a comment which was made by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, concerning the possibility of introducing disability-neutral defences in order to comply with Article 12, which outlines that persons with disabilities enjoy the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 26 January 2009). Beyond the application of the CRPD in this area, there is further potential to apply the rights contained within the treaty across all three stages of the criminal justice process (pre-trial, trial and post-trial stages), which includes areas such as policing practices, procedural rights and guarantees, reasonable accommodations, restorative justice programmes, the nature of the trial process itself, and the broad areas of punishment and imprisonment.This paper will consider the ways in which the CRPD can be applied within the pre-trial process, with specific regard to the interactions between the police and people with psychosocial disabilities accused of committing a criminal offence. It will argue that going forward, a collaborative approach is needed to ensure the realization of the rights contained within the CRPD and address the systemic barriers faced by people with disabilities in contact with the police. To do this, it will first discuss the relevance of the CRPD to criminal justice, before proceeding to argue how a collaborative response would work in practice. It will then consider Ireland as a case study and the future directions which are needed in order to comply with the CRPD.
- Subject
- disabilities; human rights law; United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD); policing; SDG 16; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1462194
- Identifier
- uon:46406
- Identifier
- ISSN:1351-0126
- Language
- eng
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