Researchers
Professor Tony Butler, Medicine & Health, UNSW
Dr Patricia Morgan, Medicine & Health, UNSW
Dr Jane Hwang, Medicine & Health, UNSW
Associate Professor Adrienne Withall, Science, UNSW
Dr Paul Simpson, Medicine & Health, UNSW
Professor Prue Vines, Law & Justice, UNSW
Ms Louise Gillings
Mr John Killick
Funding
This project was part of the Australian Human Rights Institute’s 2024 seed funding round, receiving $7,000.
Summary
Human rights violations in the Australian criminal justice system include the hyperincarceration and hyperpolicing of Indigenous people; abuse of prisoners by staff and other prisoners; prison isolation and indefinite detention; detention of children and abuse in juvenile detention; the overuse of remand; abuses related to overcrowding in some Australian prisons; and police brutality.
These violations were reported in the recent United Nations 'Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) report on the Australian criminal justice system', and by the men interviewed in the Phenomenology of Violence project. Impacts of experiencing these violations are reported in research on the health of criminal justice involved individuals, particularly those who have spent time in prison. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare confirms that these individuals have higher rates than the general population of mental health disorders, chronic physical disease, communicable disease, tobacco smoking, high-risk alcohol consumption, and illicit use of drugs.
This project aims to use arts- and community-based research to examine violations of criminal justice involved individuals’ human rights in processes of criminalisation, police practices and in prisons. The project's use of arts-based research is a strategic approach to reveal the underreported but critical issue of human rights violations in the Australian criminal justice system.
Australian Human RIghts Institute seed funding will help support a three-week, (3-hours a week) contemplative workshop series which will be conducted with 10 participants at the Samaritans Recovery Point post-release program in Newcastle, NSW. Workshop practices will be used to support participants to move beyond cognitive discursive understanding to a deeper reflective engagement with their experience of the criminal justice system.