Policing and detention
Media and commentary related to our work to provide critical oversight of NSW Police, prisons and youth detention centres, to protect human rights and ensure fair and lawful treatment.
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Secret NSW Police policy harmful to young people
A NSW Police policy that aims to predict and prevent future crime is causing serious harm to young people and undermines the objectives of the NSW youth justice system, a new report has found. The report, released today by the Youth Justice Coalition, considers the impact on young people of the Suspect Targeting Management Plan…
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Children as young as 10 ‘on secret NSW Police blacklist’; suspects ‘routinely harassed’
People as young as 10 are being included on a secretive blacklist kept by New South Wales Police, which experts say is criminalising children. Lawyers from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have released a study into a police policy known as the “Suspect Target Management Plan”…
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Northern Territory detention no place for children with disabilities
In 2016 PIAC was engaged to represent the First Peoples Disability Network (Australia) (FPDN) before the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory. Young Indigenous people are significantly over-represented in the child protection and youth justice systems, and we know that there is a high prevalence of physical, cognitive…
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Drugs problem ‘endemic’ in prison system: Coroner
The NSW Coroner’s Court has found today that the ‘availability of illicit substances in correctional facilities is an endemic problem’. This was a crucial finding in a coronial inquest into the tragic death of a 41-year-old woman who died of a heroin overdose in prison last year. Tracy-Lee Brannigan died in Dillwynia Correctional Centre in…
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Death in prison van leads to transportation change
The NSW Government has responded to the recommendations of the Deputy State Coroner MacMahon in the inquest into the death of Mark Stephen Holcroft in 2009. Mr Holcroft (pictured centre, with family) died after he suffered a heart attack in a prison van travelling from Bathurst Correctional Centre to Mannus Correctional Centre. The Coroner made eight significant…