The criminal legal system is supposed to be fair and just. But for years, successive Victorian governments have ratcheted up a dangerous “tough on crime” agenda resulting in a creep of police powers without any real accountability.
This has been made clear this week, with the Allan government presenting its political priorities to us in no uncertain terms — it is more interested in protecting police and their interests than protecting children. By backflipping on the Victorian government’s commitment to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 by 2027, Allan has betrayed Victorian children.
When the chief commissioner of police fronted up to the Yoorrook Justice Commission — Victoria’s first formal truth-telling process into injustices experienced by First Peoples — and apologised for systemic racism, Shane Patton also committed to “operationalise the raising of the age of criminal responsibility” as part of his response. Yet Victoria Police vocally and vehemently opposed raising the age to 14. And Allan capitulated.
This puts Patton and Allan at odds not only with the recommendations made by the Yoorrook Justice Commission but also with international human rights standards, medical science and criminological evidence. It is neither fair nor just to continue caging children in youth prisons. The evidence is clear that pipelining children into prisons undermines safer communities by putting children at risk of being re-criminalised in future and becoming entrenched in the quicksand of the criminal legal system.
The fingerprints of Victoria Police can be seen throughout the youth justice laws that have just passed the Victorian Parliament, including alarming new powers that will allow for children aged 10 and 11 to be transported in a police vehicle and locked up in a police station when the age is raised to just 12.
You might think that in a fair and just system, increased police powers would be met with a commensurate increase in accountability. But no — the overwhelming majority of complaints made against police are investigated by police. Colleagues investigating colleagues. Even in the most extreme cases where a person dies in police custody, it is police who will investigate. So while the Allan government continues to lock children away behind bars, police are allowed to continue evading accountability for their actions.
The same day the premier reneged on the promise, the Victorian government announced laws that shield Victoria Police from liability for legal claims arising out of the dizzying LawyerX scandal. Who can forget the jaw-dropping revelations that police recruited a barrister as an informant and that senior members of Victoria Police allowed conduct described by the highest court in Australia as “reprehensible”, involving the most “fundamental and appalling breaches of duty”?
If enacted, the laws will hand the police immunity for serious misconduct of the sort involved in the LawyerX scandal and seek to override protections enshrined in the Victorian government’s own charter of human rights. This choice follows the decision of the director of public prosecutions last year not to charge any of the police officers involved in the saga.
It is politically convenient that the Victorian government can find significant sums of money to arm police with deadly tasers and shackle children with ineffective ankle monitors, but is unprepared to fund an independent police watchdog or compensate people who have been wronged by Victoria Police as part of the LawyerX debacle. It is not fair or just, and speaks volumes about a system bent in a way that permits police to act with impunity.
While the LawyerX saga is one of the most extreme cases of police misconduct in recent history, it is a mistake to see it as the only one. It is symptomatic of a broader problem of ever-expanding police powers, with abuse of such powers unchecked and most often meted out against the most marginalised communities. Yet the political will to create long overdue and much-needed independent oversight of police remains lacking.
The status quo of locking up children yet allowing police to dodge accountability for their actions must end. So long as the Victorian government remains beholden to Victoria Police, and the criminal legal system continues to be stacked in favour of increasing police powers and evading police accountability, the ability of our so-called “justice” system to deliver any real justice will be undermined.
