The prison authorized system is meant to be honest and simply. However for years, successive Victorian governments have ratcheted up a harmful “robust on crime” agenda leading to a creep of police powers with none actual accountability.
This has been made clear this week, with the Allan authorities presenting its political priorities to us in no unsure phrases — it’s extra eager about defending police and their pursuits than defending youngsters. By backflipping on the Victorian authorities’s dedication to lift the minimal age of prison accountability from 10 to 14 by 2027, Allan has betrayed Victorian youngsters.
When the chief commissioner of police fronted as much as the Yoorrook Justice Fee — Victoria’s first formal truth-telling course of into injustices skilled by First Peoples — and apologised for systemic racism, Shane Patton additionally dedicated to “operationalise the elevating of the age of prison accountability” as a part of his response. But Victoria Police vocally and vehemently opposed elevating the age to 14. And Allan capitulated.
This places Patton and Allan at odds not solely with the suggestions made by the Yoorrook Justice Fee but additionally with worldwide human rights requirements, medical science and criminological proof. It’s neither honest nor simply to proceed caging youngsters in youth prisons. The proof is obvious that pipelining youngsters into prisons undermines safer communities by placing youngsters liable to being re-criminalised in future and turning into entrenched within the quicksand of the prison authorized system.
The fingerprints of Victoria Police could be seen all through the youth justice legal guidelines which have simply handed the Victorian Parliament, together with alarming new powers that may enable for youngsters aged 10 and 11 to be transported in a police car and locked up in a police station when the age is raised to only 12.
You would possibly assume that in a good and simply system, elevated police powers can be met with a commensurate improve in accountability. However no — the overwhelming majority of complaints made towards police are investigated by police. Colleagues investigating colleagues. Even in essentially the most excessive instances the place an individual dies in police custody, it’s police who will examine. So whereas the Allan authorities continues to lock youngsters away behind bars, police are allowed to proceed evading accountability for his or her actions.
The identical day the premier reneged on the promise, the Victorian authorities introduced legal guidelines that defend Victoria Police from legal responsibility for authorized claims arising out of the dizzying LawyerX scandal. Who can neglect the jaw-dropping revelations that police recruited a barrister as an informant and that senior members of Victoria Police allowed conduct described by the best courtroom in Australia as “reprehensible”, involving essentially the most “elementary and appalling breaches of obligation”?
If enacted, the legal guidelines will hand the police immunity for critical misconduct of the type concerned within the LawyerX scandal and search to override protections enshrined within the Victorian authorities’s personal constitution of human rights. This selection follows the choice of the director of public prosecutions final 12 months to not cost any of the law enforcement officials concerned within the saga.
It’s politically handy that the Victorian authorities can discover vital sums of cash to arm police with lethal tasers and shackle youngsters with ineffective ankle screens, however is unprepared to fund an unbiased police watchdog or compensate individuals who have been wronged by Victoria Police as a part of the LawyerX debacle. It’s not honest or simply, and speaks volumes a couple of system bent in a manner that allows police to behave with impunity.
Whereas the LawyerX saga is among the most excessive instances of police misconduct in current historical past, it’s a mistake to see it as the one one. It’s symptomatic of a broader drawback of ever-expanding police powers, with abuse of such powers unchecked and most frequently meted out towards essentially the most marginalised communities. But the political will to create lengthy overdue and much-needed unbiased oversight of police stays missing.
The established order of locking up youngsters but permitting police to dodge accountability for his or her actions should finish. As long as the Victorian authorities stays beholden to Victoria Police, and the prison authorized system continues to be stacked in favour of accelerating police powers and evading police accountability, the power of our so-called “justice” system to ship any actual justice will probably be undermined.
