Blog Articles

The UN Refugee Agency reports at least 420,000 Rohingya people have fled across the border from Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in their homelands in late August. The refugees are now living in makeshift camps in the Cox’s Bazar district. IOM, the UN Migration Agency, has called for a coordinated response to the ...

By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim Thousands of Queenslanders and Western Australians will be the next to have their Centrelink payments quarantined, as the federal government continues its rollout of the cashless welfare card. The Turnbull-led government announced plans to implement the card next year in both the Wide Bay region in Queensland including Bundaberg ...

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim On March 31 this year, an opinion piece appeared in the Age with the headline, The zombie apocalypse is here and none of us are safe. The author Wendy Squires relates a confrontation she had with a man, who’d allegedly been using ice, in a small park whilst walking ...

Over the course of the year, politicians in Sydney and Melbourne have resorted to criminalising homelessness as a way of dealing with the increasing amount of rough sleepers turning up on city streets. Last month, the Berejiklian government passed a bill that broadened police powers to enable them to remove people from crown lands within ...

Australia’s big four banks have been allowing organised crime groups to launder up to $5 million a day, according to federal and state policing agencies. Money laundering occurs when funds obtained through illegal activities such as drug trafficking is channelled into seemingly legal assets and enterprises such as businesses, property, gambling and trust funds in ...

By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim Like in NSW, crime rates in the Netherland have been declining for years. But unlike us, the Dutch decline has corresponded with a fall in the prison population, rather than a steep rise resulting from increasingly punitive measures. The Dutch criminal justice system focuses on prevention, diversion and rehabilitation ...

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim The hot weather is starting to kick in and with it, the festival season is upon us. Thousands of revellers are gearing up to take in their favourite live music acts, get down to some old skool beats, or spend the weekend partying at a bush doof. But as ...

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim The Australian inmate population is continuing its steep incline. In June this year, the number of adult inmates detained in the nation’s correctional facilities rose to 41,204, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures. This marks a 7 percent increase over the previous 12 months. The rise is despite ...

The Federal government has announced tough new laws for sex-offenders – purported to be the harshest since the establishment of the Criminal Code Act in 1995. The proposed legislation, called Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Crimes Against Children and Community Protection Measures) Bill, will make it more difficult for alleged child sex offenders to be granted ...

There’s a petition circulating around Australia right now, protesting the seemingly lenient sentences given to two mothers who committed horrific crimes against their children. Both have had extensive media coverage – mainstream and social. The two cases causing concern A 39 year old Queensland woman (who cannot be named) was spared from prison time for ...