Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Why some old fashioned Qld phones are still working....

Hearing impaired people jailed in WA

In this post I referred to the findings of the 2010 Senate Inquiry into Hearing and Ear Health, which said 90% of Darwin Correctional Centre's Indigenous inmates had hearing loss and/or ear disease, and I commented that the statistics for Western Australia's prisons were an unknown factor.


However...ear test results from the West Australian metropolitan women's jail, Bandyup, were released at the end of last year. The tests were commissioned by Corrective Services after concerns about the large number of women who appeared to need treatment.


The results showed almost half of Indigenous imprisoned women not only have a hearing loss, but of the 104 Indigenous women tested by TSH:
  • 45 required referral to a GP,
  • 13 had burst eardrums,
  • seven had visibly scarred eardrums and
  • four had ears that were discharging pus(most likely from Chronic Supperative Otitis Media).  
Not being able to hear has a negative impact on a person's ability to navigate safely through our troubled justice system, in addition to the barriers poor communications pose to schooling and getting/keeping a job - obvious for people who live with it, but a complete unknown for those who don't

Awareness of ear disease has rocketed in the last year thanks to the efforts of the Inquiry, and the test results from TSH debunk the age-old belief that Otitis Media("Glue Ear") is solely a minor ailment, limited to childhood, that occurred in isolated regions.

The test results show ear disease is also a serious problem for Indigenous people in the metro area, and the effects of the disease on ears and hearing can last a lifetime.

Previous research has shown the disease is very prevalent in regional and remote areas and 80%-90% of Indigenous children(aged 1-4 years) suffer from Otitis Media(OM) and those rates, are among the worst in the world.  A lot of those kids will end up with the more serious and exceedingly painful, Chronic Supperative Otitis Media(CSOM), recurring indefinitely, which causes lifelong auditory processing impairment and ear defects. 

The difficulties of growing up with hearing loss is only just beginning to be addressed, but the implications for a child's psychological and emotional growth, of growing up with everyday chronic pain, seems to be relatively unchartered territory.  
In the regions rife with OM, the rates decrease as kids get older(around 54% of school-aged kids in NT). However, the brain's auditory link develops at around the age of 2-3 years, creating a battle with impaired auditory processing that effectively, lasts a lifetime. Accurate information about auditory processing is still not very widely known and this means the funding, services and support are still limited.

One in ten non-Indigenous female inmates tested had a hearing loss/ear disease, as well.

Poor social(plus justice, education, employment, and anything else hinging on communications skills) outcomes are also reflected in the high rates of non-Indigenous inmates with hearing loss, who were also disproportionately represented among the prison test group, compared to the number of women with ear disease on the other side of the fence.


The 2010 Senate Hearing Inquiry recommended that all Australian inmates have their ears examined and their hearing tested and that those found to have a loss should then have the circumstances surrounding their incarceration, such as their offences and their court hearings, investigated by the state Ombudsman to screen for miscarriages of justice. At the outset, the Senate identified that there are approximately 4 million Australians with a hearing loss.
 

Monday, January 10, 2011

CCC Inquiry into the mistreatment of Kevin Spratt: Part 1 - Reporting the courts and suppression

The Spratt Hearings...
On December 9, the Corruption and Crime Commission launched an inquiry into whether there had been any misconduct in connection with the arrest, detention and investigation of matters involving Kevin Spratt, by WA Police and Corrective Services staff.
The initial set of hearings concluded on Friday December 17, 2010 and formed the starting point for an investigation that included issues like - Mr Spratt's repeated tasering at the hands of justice authorities; the internal investigations of WA Police and Corrective Services; the WA Police "dirt sheet" released after the CCC Taser Report; and, whether a WA Police officer supplied incorrect documents to a criminal court that led to a false conviction.


The inquiry came as a response to the public claims made by John Quigley, the Shadow Attorney General, of a government cover-up. Mr Quigley took the unusual step of revealing Mr Spratt's scars to people attending a human rights rally in Perth's CBD, in November.

John Quigley(left) Kevin Spratt; copyright pic by JRM taken at Rally for Humanness 13 Nov, 2010
The scars were from Mr Spratt's chest being intubated at Royal Perth Hospital after his lung was punctured by one of his ribs, whilst he was in custody. The hearings have not yet established if this was caused in WA Police custody or Emergency Services Group /Corrective Services custody, with officers from both sides blaming each other. Presumably, it was during the same 'incident,' that Mr Spratt received the dislocated shoulder, and possible multiple fractures in his ribs and elbow that the hospital staff detected.

Court reporting and courts countering "cover-up" culture

In announcing the inquiry on November 16, Commissioner Len Roberts-Smith said that a high level of public interest existed in the circumstances surrounding these incidents and the investigations into them, and that it was "in everyone’s interest that these matters are investigated thoroughly and that the outcome be placed on the public record."

In an effort to facilitate a public hearing, the CCC Commissioner allowed cameras and recording equipment into the hearing room for his opening address.


Recording equipment is strictly prohibited in court hearings and normally, news crews are required to leave the camera person downstairs or lock up the equipment in a court-supplied storage room, which either causes unworkable delays, or long waits, in order to get the footage or photos.

In the Perth Magistrate's Court inadequate provisions exist for journalists to even write notes during hearings, with court staff giving journos the run-around for permissions from other court staff, who are never on duty. This means that many of the cases in the minor criminal courts, such as Court 37 with its rapid trial turnover, aren't well publicized.

It's in courts such as the Perth Magistrate's Court, in lightning speed hearings, that individuals just like Mr Spratt are routinely sentenced, and that occurs with little or no observation by media or general public, and that's at odds with the present open approach of the judiciary.


The public nature of the CCC hearings was a new development in court transparency, also mirrored in the recent decision by the judge who heard Julian Assange's appeal, who permitted journalists to "tweet" from the court room.

The Chief Justice of Western Australia has made many efforts to facilitate better access to a wider range of court material to allow for fairer and more accurate reporting of the courts. His Law Week address in 2008 showed that media were responsible for false perceptions held by the public about inadequate sentencing, and that often the cases that featured in the media, were the most extreme that the courts see.

While Chief Justice Martin may have been diplomatic when describing the role of the media in escalating the public's misconceived fear of crime, it's true that in most mainstream media the adage, "if it bleeds, it leads," is still applicable.

So, though there is a clear systemic erosion of accuracy in court reporting - as outlined by Justice Martin, there is also, sadly, an exploitative nature to much of the crime reporting in the news. This exploitation impacts negatively not only on the story subjects and their families, friends and communities, but also dumbs down the audience/readership.


There is a fine line for journos under time constraints, and spin doctors are usually well aware of the best methods to exploit that vulnerability, to the advantage of their employer and to the detriment of accuracy and fairness in reporting justice matters.

It is just part of the job of spin doctors to cultivate and promote mutually beneficial, non-financial relationships with journalists. Those relationships sometimes underpin the blurring of ethical decisions for media workers, especially for workplaces under staffing pressures. The industry-wide absence of punitive measures or strong ethical guidelines for mainstream media workers regarding source management, means many don't realize that they can gradually end up being led by the nose in that equation, with more and more spin and less and less hard truths being shared.


The courts are trying to address the evolving media culture, but it is clear that legislative restrictions and ethics guidelines for media workers should be similarly prioritized for an upgrade.


Media outlets are not under any legal obligation to educate journalists about the present, ever-changing laws which both govern and affect reporting. However, it's only under current industrial relations law that employers are required to train staff...believe it or not, in the ancient art of shorthand(?!), long since superseded by digital recorders that promise far less human error in copy.

Permitting digital recorders into court rooms and easier access to digital court transcripts would be beneficial for accuracy, although it would reinforce the need for a national register of suppression orders.

Suppression of identities involved in CCC Spratt hearings...

While three suppression order applications were refused for WA Police officers at the outset, six were granted for ESG officers(Corrective Services TRG-style unit) during the hearings, but the orders excluded their boss. The names were also suppressed of any private citizens, who fleetingly, may have featured in written records and evidence supplied to the court in the investigation of the broader issues.


Two of the police officers who applied for suppression orders were the two central characters in the now “notorious” footage of the first taser incident at Perth Watchhouse - which went viral, web-wide.

The other police officer who wished to conceal his identity was Brett Fowler, who took sole responsibility for supplying an incorrect statement to the criminal court, without implicating anyone else including the IA investigators that caught the error four months prior to Mr Spratt’s trial, but did nothing to amend it.


In arguing for the suppression orders for the first two officers, Troy Tomlin and Grant Strahan, police lawyer Ms Vernon, argued that the process of putting a name to the faces behind the (internationally broadcast) CCTV video of their actions in the Perth Watchhouse that day, would impede the two officers' future work prospects in their present WAPS roles.

Tomlin had been moved to an area in which he was responsible for covert surveillance, she said, whilst Sgt Strahan, now worked almost exclusively with several Aboriginal language groups. She argued that public exposure of Strahan's participation in that incident could hinder his working relationships, and he gave evidence that he was multilingual in several Aboriginal languages and had invested much time and energy in developing his professional skills to work with Aboriginal people.

Ms Vernon also argued that non-suppression could cause professional hardship for Troy Tomlin’s twin, who also works at WAPS, has the same rank, and could be inadvertently mistaken for his brother.

The response from the Commissioner was that the suppression orders would not be in keeping with the public nature of the hearings and the need for accountability. He did later grant suppressions to the already well-concealed ESG Unit, whose faces were not visible on the footage.

Counsel Assisting made it clear that the actions of the ESG officers would form a significant part of the investigation and there would probably be more hearings in relation to that unit, at a later time. Taser data showed that only the two senior ESG officers used their tasers on Kevin Spratt during the Watchhouse cell "extraction."