End Aboriginal Deaths In Custody - Abolish the offence of public drunkenness

Daniel Andrews MP - Premier of Victoria

Help Tanya Day’s family honour the legacy of their mother. Sign up now to send a message to the Victorian Government to change Victoria’s destructive public drunkenness laws and create genuine community health alternatives to incarceration.

Tanya DayIn December 2017, Aunty Tanya Day, a proud Yorta Yorta woman and a respected and much-loved member of the Aboriginal community in Victoria, was travelling by train to Melbourne. She was asleep when a V/Line worker decided she needed to be removed from the train and called Castlemaine police who arrested her for public drunkenness.

While in police custody in Castlemaine she fell and sustained injuries that claimed her life 17 days later.

The injury she sustained while in police custody should never have happened. It was the result of a litany of failures, beginning with the failure of successive Victorian governments to fully implement the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody.

Almost 30 years ago the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody recommended that all states and territories abolish the offence of public drunkenness and put in place genuine community-health alternatives to incarceration.

Victoria is one of only two states that have failed to do so.

The Andrews Labor Government prides itself on being the most progressive government in Australia, yet Aboriginal people in this state are still subject to laws that put them at risk of injury and death.

Aunty Tanya Day should never have been in a police cell. Her family have been deprived of their mother, grandmother, sister and aunty, and the Aboriginal community has lost a respected advocate, who herself was supporting families of people who had died in custody.

Tanya Day’s family is calling on Premier Daniel Andrews and Attorney General Jill Hennessy to end deaths in custody by changing the law in Victoria.

We need your support for the Day family’s plan to abolish the offence of public drunkenness and create genuine community health alternatives to incarceration.

Help us send a message to the government that in 2019 Victoria must end these deaths in custody by changing the law.

To: Daniel Andrews MP - Premier of Victoria
From: [Your Name]

Premier Daniel Andrews

We draw your attention to the damage done to the community by almost 30 years of failure to implement the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody to abolish the offence of public drunkenness and implement genuine health care alternatives to incarceration.

In December 2017, Aunty Tanya Day, a proud Yorta Yorta woman and a respected and much-loved member of the Aboriginal community in Victoria, was travelling by train to Melbourne. She was asleep when a V/Line worker decided she needed to be removed from the train and called Castlemaine police who arrested her for public drunkenness. While in police custody in Castlemaine she fell and sustained injuries that claimed her life 17 days later. The injury she sustained while in police custody would never have happened if Victoria had implemented the Royal Commission recommendations.

It is time to act.

Victoria must end deaths in custody by abolishing the offence of public drunkenness and creating community health alternatives to incarceration.