NSW Courts Refuse to Convict Homeless Man
In February 2012, Mr Lanz Priestley was charged with two offences for “staying overnight” in Sydney’s Martin Place on two consecutive evenings. The City of Sydney council had erected notices in the public mall prohibiting “camping or staying overnight” in the...
Treaty Now! Uluru Summit Rejects Constitutional Recognition
Last week’s Uluru summit was the culmination of a six-month process that saw the Referendum Council travel the country carrying out the dialogues. These were a series of twelve meetings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to discuss the issue...
Supporting Criminalised Women: An Interview with Flat Out’s Jake Argyll
The Australian prison population is at an all-time high. At the end of June last year, there were 38,845 adult prisoners in Australian correctional facilities. Women accounted for 3,094 of them, which is 8 percent of the overall adult prison population. But...
Reducing Indigenous Youth Incarceration: An Interview with Just Reinvest’s Sarah Hopkins
There’s a glaring overrepresentation of young Indigenous people in the NSW prison system. While Aboriginal young people make up around 3 percent of the general population, they account for 51 percent of youths being held in juvenile detention. At the...
It’s Time for an Australian Bill of Rights
After the second world war, a series of international treaties began being introduced via the United Nations in order to define and protect people’s “inalienable human rights.” Australia has ratified the seven core international human rights conventions. This means that at the international...
Sydney’s 24-7 Street Kitchen and Safe Space: An Interview with Lanz Priestley
In February this year, there were 948 homeless people in Sydney, according to City of Sydney statistics. Of these, 433 people were sleeping rough, 489 were occupying crisis and temporary accommodation, while 26 were hospitalised. At Central’s Belmore Park and Wentworth Park...
Australian Whistleblowers are Persecuted Rather than Praised
Chelsea Manning was released from US military prison last week, after serving seven years of a 35 year prison sentence for espionage convictions relating to the classified documents she disclosed to WikiLeaks. Former US president Barack Obama commuted her sentence on...
Serial Sex Offender’s Sentence Reduced Due to Judge’s Error
A DNA profile taken from Michael Dimian in September 2013 matched the sperm fraction of two swab samples taken from the victim of a 1993 rape case. Mr Dimian had already been convicted of several other sexual assaults and was serving...
Panther, Prisoner, Professor: A Profile of Angela Davis
Angela Davis has been at the forefront of subversive political thought since the mid-60s. Currently, emerita professor in the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Ms Davis has been constantly fighting oppression throughout her career. Davis grew...
Intersectional Oppression in the Criminal Justice System
Intersectionality is the concept that people are made up of multiple social identities, such as gender, ethnicity, class and sexual orientation. These aspects of identity are not mutually exclusive. They intersect to form a whole, which differs from the separate components....
