Decriminalisation of public drunkenness delayed by Victorian government

Day had been arrested in December 2017 after being found drunk on a train, and later died in hospital from head injuries sustained in a prison holding cell.

The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) chief executive, Nerita Waight, urged the government to urgently prioritise the reform.

Day had fallen asleep on a train from Bendigo to Melbourne when she was arrested for public drunkenness and taken to a police station in Castlemaine. She hit her head at least five times in a holding cell while left unattended and died in hospital from a brain haemorrhage less than three weeks later.

Victoria and Queensland are the only jurisdictions in Australia that have a specific offence for public drunkenness, which the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody found had disproportionately affected Indigenous people, and recommended that it be abolished.

Of the 99 deaths investigated in the commission, 35% involved Aboriginal people who were detained in relation to public intoxication.