Category: Policing

Bike-riding equation comes out negative?

Much-ballyhoed bike ’safety’ claims look somewhat different when subjected to a ‘whole-of-life(style)’ analysis by dedicated research Colin Clarke.  Do helmets lead to immobility and obesity, at a greater cost to public health than accepting accidents will happen whenever you poke your nose into the great outdoors? Why have $15 fines become $240 (when they should be about $35) and become a new way for police abuse by selecting poor citizens for harassment?

Failure To Disclose: Tas police ‘don’t take disclosure seriously’

As part of CLA’s campaign to improve mandatory disclosure by police and prosecutors throughout Australia, we are monitoring what the legal profession is saying. Here’s some comments from Tasmanian barristers, including that local magistrates say Tasmania Police treats courts with contempt. If so, perhaps a magistrate will have the courage to charge Police Commissioner Donna Adams with contempt of court?

Australia Day: CLA asks AG for national forensic science regulator-authority

CLA, in one of its traditional Australia Day letters, has called in 2023 on Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to secure agreement of all other AGs for a major review of forensic science in Australia, and for a national Forensic Science Regulator/Authority. The December 2022 findings of the Sofronoff inquiry in Queensland dramatically highlighted the extent of the problems, which have caused wrongful convictions in cases like Fara Jama in Victoria, Mallard in WA, Keogh in SA and Eastman in the ACT, among many others.

DPP and police Failure To Disclose (FTD) warps justice

Increasingly, in criminal trials throughout Australia, the failure to disclose (FTD) critical information to the defence appears to be skewing trials towards wrongful conviction outcomes. The problem is not new – the cases of Mallard, Keogh and Eastman over two decades demonstrate that fact – but what was an occasional blight seems to be becoming a plague of considerable proportions. Here’s the story, plus a special report on the Rules of Disclosure by legal academic Dr Bob Moles.

Tas Police: secret, illegal keepers of the dark arts

Recent revelations of secret recordings of lawyers and their clients at Risdon Prison by Tasmanian Police over two months raised major alarm bells. The Commonwealth Ombudsman has been consistently calling out TasPol for its recording devices and surveillance warrant failures for years. TasPol's “compliance culture” is lacking, the Ombudsman says. In other words, TasPol does not obey the law. SPECIAL ANALYSIS reveals how extensive the TasPol problem is: nothing less than a full inquiry into TasPol will get to the root causes of its problems.

Warrants: how Tas compares; why reform needed

Police can self-authorise some warrants, or get a magistrate or judge to issue others. But whatever method is mandated, warrants are frequently incorrectly issued in Australia on false, dodgy or incomplete information containing wrong details and not meeting legal requirements, or by unauthorised people. The Commonwealth monitors warrant processes, and its Ombudsman has singled out one state in particular, Tasmania, for compliance and culture criticism over the past few years