The Victorian Government plans to trial three sobering-up centres across the state ahead of public drunkenness decriminalisation in 2022, a move which Aboriginal and health organisations have welcomed.

The 2021-22 state budget revealed the government would spend $9.5 million this year on the trial.

Victoria presently only has only a single specialist sobering-up facility, which has been run in metropolitan Melbourne since 1996 by an Indigenous not-for-profit. This is despite expert recommendations urging the establishment of such facilities dating back 20 years, to the 2001 Victorian Inquiry into Public Drunkenness. Seven sites were operating across the state at the time of the inquiry, which were “scathingly critical” of the lack of funding for sobering-up centres during discussions.

Bernadette Burchell, executive officer of the Yarra Drug and Health Forum, hopes one of the trial sites will be in her area of Yarra.

She says sobering-up centres provide a safe and supervised place for intoxicated people to stay, whilst providing drug and alcohol education and linking clients in with other services.

“It’s an alternative to being arrested and locked up, or taken to emergency.”

Community members often call the police when encountering someone drunk in public, but Burchell says the police’s involvement can escalate the situation.

“It’s a health issue, not a law and order issue,” she says. “Often these people [who are drunk in public] have significant histories of trauma … and police intervention is traumatising to them.”

Data from Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency shows 3822 public drunkenness offences were recorded across the state in the year ending March 2021. Of these incidents, 344 – or 9% – were committed by Indigenous people, despite 2016 census data showing they make up only 0.8 per cent of Victoria’s population.

The Victorian Government committed to decriminalising public drunkenness on the eve of the coronial inquest into the death in custody of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day in 2019. When Day was found intoxicated on a train in 2017, she was taken to a holding cell in Castlemaine. She hit her head on a concrete wall after being left in the cell unsupervised, and died 17 days later.

Apryl Day, Tanya’s daughter, told The Citizen the sobering-up centre trial was “seriously overdue”.

“I think [sobering up centres] could have made had a huge impact on the outcome for Mum.”

Day, who this year founded the Dhadjowa Foundation to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families that have had loved ones die in police custody, said such an initiative was necessary due to systemic racism within police forces.

“Every interaction with police and Aboriginal people needs to be limited.

“Sobering-up centres are definitely one of the things that are going to contribute to a safer future for Aboriginal people.”

An investigation by the Guardian Australia published in April found that have been at least 474 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991, 30 years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody concluded. That figure has since risen to 478, with the latest report emerging today of the death of a 43-year-old man in Sydney’s Long Bay jail last Thursday, 8 July.

The Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation supports the introduction of sobering-up centres, with senior policy officer Jane Andrews saying such facilities provide a “health-focused alternative to police custody”.

Facilities run out of Aboriginal community controlled organisations could provide culturally safe treatment while also linking clients to the broader service system, she said.

Tania Sharp, the manager of the Salvation Army’s South Australian alcohol and other drug services, said the sobering-up centre her agency operates in the Adelaide CBD admitted around 11,000 people every year.

Adelaide’s state-run sobering-up centre has been operating for 34 years, and admits around 11,000 people a year. Under a case management model refined in recent years, clients are referred to support and health services, and there’s been a drop in repeat visits, said the Salvation Army’s Tania Sharp.

That facility, which contains 30 beds, has been operating for 34 years and is funded by the South Australian government.

Explaining how the facility works, Sharp said that when a client arrived a worker would measure their intoxication levels, conduct a risk assessment, and remove and safeguard their property. Staff also assessed how much monitoring the client would require. Once the person had recovered from the effects of alcohol and any other drugs, they were provided with meals and a shower and invited to talk to the centre’s full-time case manager, who would then link them with other services.

Since introducing the case manager into the process in 2019, Sharp said she had noticed many new users of the centre did not return because they found the help they needed.

“Without that role, what can happen is people just struggle to navigate the systems that are out there.”

Over 60% of people who have used the centre so far this year were Indigenous. Sharp said the centre services local clients as well as those coming from remote communities and interstate.

While public drunkenness was decriminalised in 1984 in South Australia, and despite the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommending this in Victoria, the Victorian government only appointed an expert reference group to provide advice and recommendations on decriminalising public drunkenness in 2019. Recommendations included expanding the state’s sobering-up centres and reducing police involvement in incidents of public intoxication.

Responding to questions from The Citizen, a Victorian government spokesperson said: “We are committed to implementing a state-wide public health model to ensure that those who are intoxicated in public can access the care and support they need.”

This shift will likely minimise the role of police, a change which concerns Police Association of Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt.

“If laws are not tightened to protect the capacity of police to act, or if the infrastructure does not meet demand, then the result may actually increase workloads considerably for the police,” he said.

Gatt said the $16 million the government has allocated to the shift to a health-based model is insufficient to build a network of sobering-up centres across the state.

But Sam Biondo, CEO of the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association, took issue with the police association’s attitude towards public drunkenness reform.

“I’m surprised the police association is raising issues about the workability of this proposal because it actually supports them in focusing their resources where they’re needed and dealing with people’s inebriation in a safer environment,” he said.

“[The proposal] seeks to address an area where police have come, time after time, under great criticism for what occurred under their watch when someone has inadvertently died in a prison cell.”