Judges in Australia’s largest state have been given woke new guidelines recommending special treatment for aboriginals and Muslims, sparking warnings they create a two-tier justice system.
Provisions in New South Wales Equality Before the Law bench book, which provides guidance for judicial officers, tell judges to consider hearing cases involving indigenous people in a closed court or before a female, and to try and “divert” them away from prison.
The book claims that aboriginals suffer from “cultural wounds” as a result of “intergenerational trauma” which are “best treated with ‘cultural medicines'”, and recommends using Indigenous Liaison Officers to “enhance cultural safety”.
“It is important to obtain advice from cultural consultants and the defence regarding culturally appropriate aspects of the hearing, and whether it might be more respectful (and effective) to have, for example, a closed hearing, or a female judicial officer,” the guidelines state.
“It is also important to be aware of the impact of possible unconscious racial and cultural biases and racial profiling: judicial officers, like most people, are not immune to holding implicit and unconscious biases despite their best efforts.”
The bench book goes on to recommend judges “divert First Nations (sic) people from the courts system and imprisonment wherever possible” and states that bail conditions “can often have a disproportionately stringent impact on First Nations (sic) people”.
In the section on Islam, judicial officers are told that the term “jihad” can be “misunderstood and controversial”, and the bench book notes an amendment explaining the term in-depth was made “to provide greater understanding of the Muslim tradition of non-violence”.
The bench book was also updated in April to “generally remove the term ‘transsexual’ unless required, with preference for language such as ‘transgender'”, and now recommends using “appropriate gender pronouns”.
Legal expert Janet Albrechtsen responded to the amendments in a column in The Australian, warning “these new guidelines introduce inequality before the law”, and saying it appeared as if the far-left Greens party had “taken control of the NSW judicial watchdog”.
Albrechtsen noted that the British Justice Secretary recently brought in emergency legislation blocking similar recommendations from the UK Sentencing Council, and urged the NSW Attorney-General to do the same.
“Judges should remember that deference towards them is earned, not a given,” she wrote.
“Attempts to use sentencing to establish anything remotely approaching a two-tier justice to suit their personal politics would be a grave mistake.”
According to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5% of adult aboriginal males now behind bars Australia-wide, and in NSW the imprisonment rate was 2,118.5 per 100,000 adult population in NSW, compared to 190 overall.
Header image: Left, convicted aboriginal criminal Adrian Noel Torrens who killed himself in jail after being arrested for murdering a woman, 19, on the NSW Central Coast in March. Right, convicted aboriginal criminal Trae Laurie, who died in a home invasion in Kingscliff, NSW, last year (Facebook).
