Stuffed Owl Better than Defence Lawyer!
Not everyone can afford to pay for a private lawyer. And in Australia, we do not have a right to a government-funded lawyer to represent us in court. This is different to the US where defendants in criminal cases have...
Can police enter and leave my property as they please?
Imagine being woken up in the middle of the night by two people yelling at each other from inside your property. Dorothy Isabel Ibbett awoke at 2am to find her son and a stranger yelling in her garage. Her son...
Making a Complaint against a Magistrate or Judge
Those who are sent to court are entitled to a fair hearing from the magistrate or judge, but unfortunately this does not always happen. Magistrates have a difficult job in our criminal justice system, often hearing large numbers of cases...
Overseas Homicide Investigations to be Made Easier
Getting justice for the murder of a loved-one can be especially difficult when the crime occurred overseas. Besides the obvious barriers of geography and information, current laws say that those who kill Australians overseas can only be prosecuted if the...
Almost Half of Aspiring Barristers Fail Ethics Exam
In the United Kingdom, 43% of those who sat this year’s Bar Professional Training Course exam failed the ethics section. The results are concerning - after all, lawyers are supposed to act ethically in the delivery of legal services and...
Police tweet about woman being fined for stealing tampons
An Aboriginal woman in Western Australia was fined $500 for stealing a box of tampons worth $6.75. The woman took the tampons from a service station, and was caught on camera. She told police that she was stealing the tampons...
Police officers must personally pay for bashing and humiliating man
Each year, police forces in Australia pay millions of dollars in compensation to people who have been mistreated by police officers. In these situations, it is really the taxpayer who foots the bill, not the guilty officers. But while this...
New Prison for Indigenous Inmates
One of the more troubling statistics to emerge from our criminal justice system is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inmates make up 40% of Western Australia’s prison population, despite comprising only 3% of the state’s population. Many Australian prisons...
Should Kids be Held in Immigration Detention Centres?
More than 400 doctors from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Victoria are refusing to send children back to the Nauru offshore detention centre, creating tensions between the hospital and Immigration Department. The doctors believe that discharging children into the inhumane...
Is it an offence to resist an unlawful arrest?
It’s no secret that some police officers act outside of the law, including when it comes to arrests. For a range of reasons, those under arrest may be reluctant to assert their rights - even if they know they’ve done...
