Almost half of the Victorian male occupants have a brain injury. For Michael, the diagnosis was the first step towards a new life Australia News

MIchael Mayne doesn't know exactly when he gained a brain injury. It may have been the result of decades of drug use or a combination of all three in one of two serious motorcycle accidents or – as he suspects. But he knows when it was diagnosed: he was 47 years old and he had just come out of prison – and not for the first time.

An estimated 2% of Australians have an acquired brain injury (ABI). The most common causes are accidents, trauma, stroke and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. But among the prison population, the prevalence of Abi is astronomically high and leads to argue that the system that is supposed to provide justice effectively criminals the disability.

A 2011 study estimated that 42% of the male prisoners and 33% of female prisoners in Victoria had an Abi. The Australian Institute of Health and Social Welfare reports that prevalence can be up to 90%nationally. But although people with high school diploma are disproportionately represented, there are only a few screening processes to identify them on the way and not very available.

Mayne hopes to change that. He is one of four people who shared their stories for a new podcast, all inside and examines the different possibilities of how the judicial system catches people in a criminalization cycle. The podcast is the product of Voices for Change-one self-confidence group for people with ABI who contact the Justice System Hatten and Fitzroy Legal Service.

“What I know now, if I knew it back then, I would be a completely different person,” says Mayne.

Mayne had had trouble with the law since his child and began in adolescence at the age of 13 due to motorcycle-related crimes. After the death of his parents, only two months outside of each other, when he was 18 years old, he began at the age of 18, and his drug use escalated, like his crime: Auto Theft, a closure, the robust.

“The quantities of heroin that I pumped into myself – I sometimes spent $ 1,500 a day,” says Mayne, 57. He overdosed “a few times”; He fell his motorcycle; He repeatedly went into and out of prison.

A doctor first suggested Mayne to have a high school diploma during one of these prison institutions. With the help of his family doctor, he found out about a decade ago.

“When I have a high school diploma, I feel like a second class citizen because I don't understand a lot of things. I taught myself in prison how to read the newspaper,” says Mayne in the podcast. “If there was any way, they would have checked me to see if I had a high school diploma, I think my time would have been shorter and very different.”

“Disability and social exclusion often connected”

Jai Haines knew from the beginning of his high school diploma. He was 19 years old when he misjudged a corner on his motorcycle. The bike collided with the tree first and his head followed – an impact that was so powerful, separated his helmet into two parts.

Before the accident, the young Tommegeginne man had played a gridiron at the state level, was a good student and planned to join the army. But medical tests soon confirmed a brain injury, and the world of Haines was deeply changed.

“Sitting in the hospital and having to do all these cognitive skills, and I just couldn't concentrate … as much as I wanted to make an effort, I just couldn't do it. And it really made me angry,” says Haines, now 45,. “In the end I only hit the drugs very hard, drink a lot to drink, and that led me to make crimes.”

It would take many years, a mini stroke, a compassionate lawyer-“She spoke to me in a way that gave me the feeling that I was valid” and similarly compassionate to help him turn over his life. “His name was a judge Hardy and so he said to me. He knew that I was a better person,” said Haines. “He actually sat down [with me] … and he goes: “I will not prepare you in this way to fail, buddy.”

Stan Winford, a researcher and right -wing expert at the RMIT University Center for Innovative Justice, says that it usually needs several encounters with the system for people with ABI to identify their injury, let alone addressed. And even if people know it, disclosure is not always in their best interest.

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“It can be something that makes it susceptible to different forms of exploitation and oppression within the system,” says Winford. “If you let people know that you have this form of disability, you will be transferred from other prisoners. If you let some civil servants know – for example, police officers – you could be less able to exercise your rights in interviews.”

While the judicial system “whatever difficult and overwhelming conditions” develops in community corrections or deposit orders, people who have difficulties with memory, executive function or organization are more likely to be drawn into them.

“Prisoners become warehouses for people who have problems with mental health or disability needs,” says Winford. “Disability and social exclusion are often connected and it can lead to contact with the judicial system, and then these cycles can be continued.”

Better screening and support required

In a damn report from 2023, the Victorian Auditor General found that the Ministry of Justice and Community did not know how many of his prisoners had an ABI or how many required support was required. The department had no method to record this information when a person came through the door, and long -lists only for limited services, the report said.

The Auditor General recommended the department to develop mandatory screening processes in order to identify prisoners with intellectual disabilities or ABI, to train the personnel accordingly and to monitor prisons to ensure that they comply with the support requirements for people with disabilities.

The Victorian Justice Department of Justice did not respond to Guardian Australia for comments about whether it had implemented recommendations from the auditor general.

Every episode of all inside contains concrete suggestions to help people with Abi from the malignant criminalization loop. For Haines and Mayne it was an essential part of the break in this cycle.

“Sometimes I found it really difficult, but I went through it,” says Haines. “Now I have this passion, I have this empathy. I have so much in me that I can give my community back a little because I know how much I did wrong and my past cannot change, but what I do today will show the person I'm now.”

“One of the best things I did in my life is joining this group,” says Mayne. “People tell me how is it to have your life back? I say I don't have my life back. Now I actually have me receive A life, do you know? “