Australian Body Needed to Investigate Wrongful Convictions
Legal experts have called for the establishment of a new national body to investigate possible wrongful convictions, which would work in a similar way to the review body in the UK. Flinders University law lecturer Bibi Sangha believes such a...
Teen So Rich He Couldn’t Tell Right from Wrong, Judge Finds
An American teenager who popularised the ‘affluenza defence’ has been arrested for breaching his probation. In 2013, 16-year-old Ethan Couch was sentenced to 10 years’ probation after killing four people in a drink driving incident. During his sentencing hearing, Couch’s...
NSW Police Force: A Law Unto Themselves
New powers given to police are looking even worse than initially feared, as concerned groups delve into the breadth of their applicability. The NSW Bar Association points out that new ‘public safety orders’ (PSOs) and ‘serious crime prevention orders’ (SCPOs)...
Teenagers Criminalised for Sexting
Advocacy group Youth Action has made submissions to a NSW Parliamentary enquiry calling for sexting laws to be amended so that young people are no longer criminalised and placed on the sex offenders register for expressing their sexuality in a...
Domestic Violence Records Now Accessible
New South Wales residents concerned about the risk of domestic violence are now be able to apply to access their partner’s criminal history. In an Australian first, NSW police are now able to reveal convictions related to murder, manslaughter, sexual...
AVOs May Soon Apply Across Australia
Government initiatives have so far failed to stamp-out the epidemic of domestic violence in Australia. Last week, NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton appealed to all states and territories to follow NSW in tracking the movement of domestic violence offenders to other...