Contact details
Email: Justicehealth@justice.vic.gov.au (External link)
Phone: 03 9947 1601
Fax: 03 9947 1626
Postal address:
GPO Box 123
Melbourne VIC 3001
Justice Health is a business unit of the Department of Justice and Community Safety and is responsible for the delivery of health services for persons in Victoria's prisons.
It reports to a Joint Management Committee consisting of the major stakeholders in the justice sector including Corrections Victoria, the Department of Health (External link) and Victoria Police (External link).
The key responsibilities are to:
- set the policy and standards for health care in prisons
- contract manage the health service providers in the public prisons
- monitor and review health service provider performance
- facilitate an integrated approach to planning and service delivery
- lead health prevention and promotion activities
- facilitate the release of health information to community health care providers, legal representatives and individuals.
In Victoria, health services are contracted out to health services providers:
- Correct Care Australasia (a subcontractor of GEO Group Australia) which provides primary health services at all public prisons and the Judy Lazarus Transition Centre
- Forensicare (Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health) which provides secondary mental health services at all public prisons, including the management and provision of services within the Acute Assessment Unit at the Melbourne Assessment Prison and the Marrmak Unit at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre
- G4S (the operator of Port Phillip Prison) which sub-contracts St Vincent’s Correctional Health Services to provide primary health services, outpatient mental health services and secondary residential mental health services (through St Paul’s Psycho-Social Unit) at Port Phillip Prison. St Thomas’s Unit provides outpatient consultation. St Vincent's Correctional Health Services also provides statewide secondary inpatient health services delivered through St John's at Port Phillip Prison and secondary and tertiary inpatient services from St Vincent’s Hospital
- GEO Group Australia which provides primary health and mental health services at Fulham Correctional Centre
- Forensicare which provides mental health services for involuntary patients at Thomas Embling Hospital, including patients transferred from prison
- Caraniche which provides alcohol and other drug treatment programs at all public prisons. GEO Group provides alcohol and drug treatment programs at Fulham Correctional Centre and G4S provides similar programs at Port Phillip Prison.
Other projects of Justice Health
- The Forensic Alcohol and Other Drugs Treatment and Services team within Justice Health is leading a project to design a new Forensic Alcohol and other Drug (AOD) Service Delivery Model. The primary aim of the new Forensic AOD Service Delivery Model is to enhance the forensic AOD service response to offenders on mandated treatment orders.
- The Justice Health Communicable disease framework 2017 sets out the Department of Justice and Community Safety's goals and objectives for action on communicable disease.
- The Justice Health Research and Evaluation Framework highlights directions for the Justice Health research and evaluation agenda for the period 2015-2019, and outlines the concepts and principles that Justice Health will apply to research and evaluation.
- Health Service Provider Resource list, under the Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing Plan.
- Providing information under the Family Violence and Child Information Sharing Schemes.