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Keywords: Rehabilitation

  • AUSTRALIA

    Juvenile injustice

    • Julian Butler
    • 22 February 2022
    5 Comments

    Having previously spent time as lawyer working predominantly in the Children’s Court of Victoria, there isn’t too much about the State’s treatment of young people that shocks me. That is, until a few weeks ago when I was drawn to the final item of The Weekend Australian’s editorial column. Under the heading, ‘Hurt boy’s inhuman treatment’, was set out the details of a 15-year-old West Australian boy who had been ‘locked alone in a glass-walled observation cell of a juvenile detention centre in the southern suburbs of Perth for 79 days.’    

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How the illicit drug trade helped the spread of Covid

    • Stephen Lawrence
    • 16 November 2021
    3 Comments

    A truth that virtually dares not speak its name is that the spread of Covid 19 into regional New South Wales was largely a product of the illicit drug trade. Understanding why and how this occurred points in the direction of much needed social policy. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ebbtide of responsibility

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 July 2021
    9 Comments

    The tidal movement from treating children as persons each with their own dignity, and worthy of respect and of encouragement to a good future, to treating them as adult and incorrigible criminals worthy only of punishment is both irrational and injurious of society as well as of the children themselves. Yet it is deeply rooted in the mindset of all Australian Governments.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Funding shake-up leaves out key SA homelessness services

    • Michele Madigan
    • 13 May 2021
    9 Comments

    A state government has an obligation to do what is possible within the limits of state resources to help its people, to make the state an inclusive place where all have access to essential services and housing. However, over the last few weeks, with the announcement of the funding restructure for homelessness services, this idea of a fair go seems to have dissipated.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Disability RC hears how criminal justice system fails people with disabilities

    • Justin Glyn
    • 02 March 2021

    Hearing 11 of the Commission has looked at how Australia’s justice system treats people with disabilities. The intersection between disability and the criminal justice system is, unfortunately, not a happy one.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Prisoners need action now facing COVID-19

    • Julie Edwards
    • 09 April 2020
    6 Comments

    We know that prisons are pressure cooker environments at the best of times. We can’t let them also become sites of mass infection, with potentially grave consequences, during the current COVID-19 health crisis. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Disability RC reveals important medical history

    • El Gibbs
    • 02 March 2020
    2 Comments

    Disabled people, and those that love them, have told the latest hearing of the Disability Royal Commission about their experiences in the health system. Neglect, abuse, violence all featured, with medical people and systems often talked about, not as caring health professionals, but as callous and cruel.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The anatomy of hope

    • Fiona Murphy
    • 18 February 2020
    5 Comments

    Over a decade ago, when applying to study physiotherapy, I carefully read through the application form. It contained a brief but troubling caveat: all students must be physically able to participate in the coursework. I felt nervous, even scared. The answer seemed clear cut to me, but would the university agree?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Inmate internet access more than a prison perk

    • Nicola Heath
    • 10 October 2019
    7 Comments

    For a nation with such a significant convict history, Australians take a peculiarly puritanical approach to prisoner welfare. Punishment, not rehabilitation, is often viewed as the point of the justice system. We take a very dim view of anything that could be construed as a prisoner perk. One such perceived privilege is access to the internet.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope answers policies that suffocate hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 September 2019
    10 Comments

    The Pope's speech was newsworthy because in Australia sentences to a lifetime in prison without parole are becoming less contentious and more used. His approach to prisoners and their criminal behaviour is in such strong contrast to strands of Australian culture in which exclusion and the denial of hope are an instinctive response.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A different approach needed for youth justice

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 September 2019
    4 Comments

    The Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass has published a damning report of the use of isolation for children in Victorian justice centres. Those acquainted with the administration of juvenile justice in Australia will find nothing new in the report. Therein lies its scandal.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The tweet smell of APS authoritarianism

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 12 August 2019
    5 Comments

    Should a public service have people with political, disagreeable opinions? No, according to the guidelines of employment in the Australian Public Service. The decision of the Australian High Court in the case of Comcare v Banerji is a salient warning to employees in the APS. Obedience, it seems, must be unquestionable and total.

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