Subscribe
Archive for Monday, June 15th, 2009 04:10 pm GMT +10
Human Rights Submission
In response to the National Human Rights Consultation, the NSW Policy Team of the Left-Right Think Tank prepared a policy paper, supporting the nationwide implementation of a Human Rights Act. The paper focused on three areas: the consolidation of rights of youth offenders, the implementation of an adequate checks-and-balance system on the exercise of police detention and arrest powers, and the reinforcement of the right to education and religious freedom.
Human rights discourse often focuses on the rights of those accused under the criminal law and those who have been incarcerated. However, while they are affected by the same human rights considerations as adults, it needs to be recognised that further considerations make the rights of young people in the criminal justice system markedly different from that of adults. Youth are particularly vulnerable to the operation of the criminal law. Identifying a youth as an ‘offender’, without attempting to address rehabilitation on a substantive level, clearly has detrimental effects. While states and territories within Australia have generally made an attempt to ensure that youth are protected from the harshness of the criminal law, there are still a number of issues that a Human Rights Act would be able to appropriately address. Any Bill of Rights should seek to enshrine rehabilitative goals with regard to the sentencing of youth, should contain a provision which abolishes mandatory sentencing, and should set the maximum age by which an offender can appear in a youth court to eighteen years. Each of these proposals will be discussed further below.