Psychiatric disorders and offending in an Australian birth cohort: Overrepresentation in the health and criminal justice systems for Indigenous Australians

Objective: Most studies that examine psychiatric illness in people who offend have focused on incarcerated samples, with little known about the larger population of individuals with criminal justice system contact. We examine the overlap between proven offences and psychiatric diagnoses with an emphasis on experiences for Indigenous Australians. Methods: In a population-based birth cohort of 45,141 individuals born in Queensland, Australia, in 1990 (6.3% Indigenous), psychiatric diagnoses were identified from hospital admissions between ages 4/5 and 23/24 years and proven offences were identified from court records (spanning ages 10–24 years). Prevalence rates for offending, psychiatric diagnoses and their overlap were examined for Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals. Associations between specific psychiatric diagnoses and types of offending were examined using logistic regressions. Results: There were 11,134 (24.7%) individuals with a finalised court appearance, 2937 (6.5%) with a diagnosed psychiatric disorder and 1556 (3.4%) with a proven offence and diagnosed psychiatric disorder, with Indigenous Australians significantly overrepresented across all outcomes. Compared with non-Indigenous Australians, Indigenous Australians were younger at their first court finalisation (Cohen’s d = −0.62, 95% confidence interval = [−0.67, −0.57]), experienced a higher number of finalisations ( d = 0.94, 95% confidence interval = [0.89, 1.00]) and offences ( d = 0.64, 95% confidence interval = [0.59, 0.69]) and were more likely to receive custodial ( d = 0.41, 95% confidence interval = [0.36, 0.46]) or supervised ( d = 0.55, 95% confidence interval = [0.50, 0.60]) sentences. The overlap between offending and psychiatric illness was more pronounced for Indigenous Australians compared with non-Indigenous Australians (14.8% vs 2.7%). Substance use disorders were the most prevalent psychiatric diagnosis among individuals with a court finalisation (9.2%). Conclusions: Indigenous Australians were significantly overrepresented in court finalisations and psychiatric diagnoses. Indigenous Australians with a psychiatric diagnosis were at highest risk of experiencing a court appearance, emphasising the importance of culturally appropriate mental health responses being embedded into the criminal justice system.

Throwing the Unlawful Detention Jurisprudence into Turmoil: A Critique of De Klerk V Minister of Police 2020 1 SACR 1 (CC)

Before the judgement in De Klerk v Minister of Police 2020 1 SACR 1 (CC), (de Klerk), a plaintiff could claim damages for unlawful arrest and detention after the first appearance in court if the arresting (or the investigating) officer had conducted himself unlawfully in addition to the unlawful arrest. The conduct of the arresting (or investigating) officer had to be such that it influenced the prosecution and/or the court to deny the plaintiff bail. In De Klerk the majority of the Constitutional Court (CC), after assuming that factual causation had been proven, held the Minister of Police (Minister) liable for the unlawful arrest and detention of the plaintiff (including detention after the plaintiff had appeared in court). This was despite the CC’s having found that the conduct of the arresting officer after the appearance of the plaintiff in court had been lawful. The CC held that the arresting officer foresaw that by not releasing the plaintiff, the plaintiff would be remanded in detention – the unlawful conduct. The arresting officer was aware that the practice in the court where the plaintiff appeared was to remand all first appearance cases without considering the accused for release on bail. This note contends that the CC's decision does not bear scrutiny. The flaw in the CC's decision arose from its assumption that factual causation had been proven in this case. This faulty approach flowed from the CC's unconventional application of the "but-for" test. Instead of substituting the defendant's actual conduct for the hypothetical reasonable conduct, the CC held that it was the defendant's conduct per se that had caused the plaintiff harm. On this application of the "but-for" test, an arresting officer is unlikely to escape liability for an unlawful arrest and detention even if his or her conduct ceases to be unlawful at one stage or another. The Minister was held liable for the blameworthy conduct of the arresting officer up to the time of the plaintiff's appearance in court. The arresting officer played no role whatsoever after the appearance of the plaintiff in court. It is therefore absurd to hold that her conduct was the factual cause of the damage the plaintiff suffered. Ordinarily the Minister would not be held liable for detention after the court appearance. There was nothing extraordinary in the De Klerk case warranting the Minister’s being held delictually liable for the post-court-appearance detention. The plaintiff failed to prove that it was the conduct of the arresting officer that caused the plaintiff damage post the court appearance.

Denunciafauna – A social media campaign to evaluate wildlife crime and law enforcement in Peru

General Public Complaint Against Captive Wildlife),in short Denunciafauna, ran from April 2014 to April 2017 as an experiment to empirically assess the capacity of Peruvian wildlife authorities to address animal trafficking. We used a political ecology activist research framework, where the campaign is part of research examining on-the-ground responses to complaints and opportunities for collaboration with civil society.During the campaign we collected information on 179 cases of wildlife crime involving animals, from which 214 official complaints were made. These cases involved thousands of illegally held and traded individuals. The official complaints included the illegal possession of animals at tourist attractions,in private homes, markets, circuses, street vendors, and as part of initiatives authorized by the State. Forty-four per cent of the complaints did not result in any type of intervention by the wildlife authorities. In a further 26% of cases we, the complainants, have not been informed of the results of the complaint. Thirty per cent of complaints resulted in the confiscation of all or some of the animals involved, but only 7% of all reported cases led to an official investigation by the public prosecutor, and of these, only 3% (7cases) resulted in a court appearance with a sentence given or pending. We describe 'typical' cases which illustrate some of the quantitative results.These quantitative results, cases presented, and participative observation methodologies were used to examine the main limitations of wildlife authorities in Peru. Chronic deficiencies have consistently resulted in the very limited responses of Peruvian wildlife authorities to attend to official complaints and their inability to provide efficient and proportionate responses to wildlife crime, and, in some cases, to even promote or participate in illicit activities. However, pressure and support from civil society can significantly improve authorities' performances.

“Not So Denatured as to Kill Her Child”

Chapter Three moves to the Illinois Country (Upper Louisiana) in 1748 and explores the contentious relationship between two enslaved women: Marie-Jeanne, a pregnant woman of African descent accused of infanticide after going into labor, and Lisette, a young Indian girl. The chapter explores French views of motherhood, and of enslaved Africans as parents, but also enslaved women’s particular vulnerability to sexual abuse from French men both in the French Atlantic and Indian Oceans (especially Mauritius). Marie-Jeanne and Lisette’s court appearance, in Kaskaskia and then in New Orleans where Marie-Jeanne was sent to be tried, afforded them the possibility of narrating their own stories of loss, and, in the fissures between the lines of questioning and their answers, the childless woman and the motherless child interspersed references to work roles, conflicts over authority, and their conceptions of motherhood.

Preliminaries to Court Appearance

This Chapter aims to deal with what happens to a suspect between initially being questioned by a police officer about an offence and making his first court appearance. The subject is a wide-ranging one, involving evidence and constitutional law as well as procedure proper. The aim is to give an overall impression of what happens to a suspect, concentrating especially on police procedure and practice. For those aspects of the subject which are more properly the province of constitutional law or evidence (e.g., powers of arrest and search or the exclusion of inadmissible confessions), the reader is referred for details to Blackstone’s Criminal Practice 2019, especially sections D1 and F2.

R v NS

This article critically evaluates a court decision that rejected a request of a witness donning the Islamic full veil known as the niqab to allow her religious exemption from a rule requiring access to witnesses’ demeanor during a court appearance and testimony. Through evaluating the justices’ competing arguments, the article explores the question of religious exemptions in a liberal society. It considers different aspects of the question such as equality, personal choice, religious freedom, and the liberal commitment to public reason. Finally, the article articulates and defends a novel principle for adjudicating requests for religious exemptions. It proposes a “meaningful choice to practice one’s religion” principle.