In 2011, Corrections Victoria reported that 42 per cent of men and 33 per cent of women, in a sample of the Victorian prison population, had been diagnosed with acquired brain injury (ABI); this compares with just two per cent across the general population.
The extraordinary overrepresentation of people with ABI in Victorian prisons reflects a broader failure of the criminal justice system to recognise and respond to the needs of people with ABI.
Jesuit Social Services and RMIT’s Centre for Innovative Justice developed the Enabling Justice project to address these challenges, recognising that doing so in a meaningful way would require the involvement of people with ABI and lived experience of the criminal justice system.
