Criminal justice system refers to a system of enforcement, which can either be, the bar, the judiciary, the corrections department and institutions, probation, or other government institutions aimed or geared towards sustaining social control through, deterring, prosecuting where necessary, defending the rule of law, sentencing, and alleviating crime and even sanctioning those who violate the law with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts.
The accused have rights that have to be adhered to, by the authorities, the authorities are divided into 3:
- The police,
- The courts,
- The corrections include jails, prisons, paroles and probation.
The police are mostly mandated with investigations and maintaining public law and order, the courts constitute, judges, prosecutors and the defense attorney, the main role are to form avenues in which disputes are settled and justice administered, while the corrections come in mostly when the accused has been found guilty and their main role is to rehabilitate which may include punishments.
There have been fears that the criminal justice system in Australia is not as strong as it should be considering there have been lapses when dealing with gender, social class, and even racial matters.
The criminal justice system is constituted into the following broad categories:
- The federal criminal justice system,
- The state system.
The difference between the two is the judicial coverage where just like the United States of America, the administration of law is carried out by the relevant state and territorial police services who also have legislative powers on matters that don’t infringe on the commonwealth of Australia. “The Commonwealth of Australia is composed of six states, both the state and the commonwealth systems of government are consistent with the liberal democratic tradition supposedly derived from British Westminster system and North America constitution” (Australia Travel Search, 2008).
The Australian constitution describes the government powers and clearly defines the different roles played by the legislative, executive, and judicial arms of the commonwealth government.
The parliament constitutes the legislative arm and its main purpose is to make laws, executive has the power to administer laws and carry out some other governmental functions and activities, while the judicature has judicial powers to ensure justice is upheld in all judicial activities (Wikipedia, 2009).
Just like in the US, each state has powers to implement state legislation on criminal justice but has to remain relevant with the federal government’s enactments which may sometimes override the former.
Just like in the US, racial issues have taken center stage in the past, in past, there has been racist violence, like the December 11th, 2005 in Sydney suburb of Cronulla, where a violent and drunken mob abused and inflicted injuries on everyone who seemed to originate from Middle Eastern, the prime minister even sided with the partakers of the violence, by saying “I think it is important we do not rush to judgment about this events, I think racism is a term that is flung around carelessly and I’m simply not going to do so” (World Socialist Party, 2005), even later he expressed his approval of the thugs who wrapped themselves in the national flag saying “I would never condemn people for being proud of the Australian flag”, (World Socialist Party, 2005).
In the US, there are always allegations about the police being too tough on African Americans, this is a common occurrence in Australia, where New South Wales police are said to have entrenched racism and are notorious in the prosecution of the most oppressed in the society like the Aboriginal and the immigrant youth, this constitutes the discriminatory application of the law by the police a subject which can easily provoke animosity among races in the country.
Racism is a common problem in many countries where many races exist, the USA has had racial tensions which have resulted in rioting, Los Angeles (1965, 1992) and Detroit (1967), Australia is said to have exercised an exclusionary immigration policy which would target all non-Caucasians, this would constitute discriminatory application of the criminal justice system in the country by showing preference to Caucasians.
America has come a long way in breaking away from racial ties to an extend of electing an Africa American for president, this would be a good example to Australia which has been condemned a number of times by human rights activists, the most significant being the stolen Generation, where under official government policy Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander children were subjected to forced removal from their families between 1909 and 1969 (Malinda, 2009).
The white Australia policy also included a restrictive immigration policy which would limit or rule out non-white immigration into the country especially between 1901 to 1973, this policy would also extend to the Aboriginal and Torres strait Islanders of half-blood by forcing them to assimilate into the white society (Malinda, 2009).
Just like in American prisons, where the indigenous people form the greatest percentage, the highest recorded indigenous prisoners were recorded in Western Australia, with 3, 846 indigenous prisoners in every 100, 000 adult indigenous population compared to 133 non-indigenous for every 100, 000 adult non-indigenous population (Australia Corrective services, 2009).
The International Education sector in Australia has been attracting a lot of foreign students who have made the sector to be the third largest export earner in the country, Indian students enrollment into the system has been increasing annually at a rate of approximately 41 percent, however, the recent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne greatly undermines this trend and proves that Australia is yet to achieve a racial free country and further proves the inability of law enforcers to stop any form of racial attacks.
The criminal justice system in Australia is similar to the USA’s in the following ways:
- Presumption of innocence,
- The neutral role of the trial judge, and
- The use of trial judge, this is attributed to their common English origin (Wayne and Marcus, 2003).
“The approaches between the two countries are different in the sense that USA‘s is rights jurisprudence while Australia’s is centered around preserving the rule of law and the integrity of the courts within the legal system as a whole” (Wayne and Marcus, 2003).
The criminal justice system is sometimes influenced by social classes where as long as one can afford a good lawyer then every case is as good as won, the system should be streamlined to act against injustices based on social classes to ensure fair application of the system to all countrymen irrespective of gender, race and social classes.
For a country or a society to function properly and the people living in any to live harmoniously without acrimonies, then a strong and non-discriminatory criminal and justice system should be in place the system should be able to address criminology and offer rehabilitative services to criminals.
Australia has put up some effort in ensuring that the criminal justice system is strong and non-discriminatory, key among their efforts is the establishment of the racial discrimination act which seeks to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race in areas of public life, like in employment, renting or buying of properties, provision of goods and services, advertising and so on. The act was established in 1975 aimed at making racial discrimination unlawful and it overrides inconsistent state or territorial legislation, it seeks to completely rule out favoritism based on race, color, descent, or even ethnic origin. The act was later amended to make race hatred unlawful in 1995 and there are still concerns on whether the act is still effective and useful in contemporary Australian society.
The racial discrimination act was established 33years ago and very few amendments have been affected, it is necessary to continually review the act against the goals it sought to achieve in order to ensure it remains relevant and also to ensure equal treatment of all people in the country and protection against discrimination.
According to a report from the Attorney General’s office in the Australian government (2006), the country has constantly been appearing before the United Nations to report progress on Human rights-related issues, among them, the 2005 appearance before the United Nations committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.
References
Australia Corrective Services, ABS. (2009). Indigenous incarceration rates. Australia. Melbourne, Australia.
Australia travel search. (1999 – 2008). Australian law and politics. Web.
Malinda, N. (2009). Obama’s America and the Race Challenge, time for a global change of ideologies. Web.
Wayne, V. C. & Marcus P. (2003). Australia and the United States” Two common Criminal justice systems uncommonly at odds, social science research network. Web.
Wikipedia (2009), Government of Australia – Federalism. Web.
World Socialist Party. (2005). The class issues behind Australia’s race riots. Web.