Detention In Australia Research Articles

A Brighter Tomorrow: Raise the Age of Criminal Responsibility

A report released by Amnesty International in May 2015 highlights the alarming overrepresentation of Indigenous young people in detention in Australia. It calls on the Australian Commonwealth Government to make a number of legislative changes to address this issue, which the report argues are necessary to ensure Australia's compliance with its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The foremost area in need of reform identified in the report is the low age of criminal responsibility in Australia. This note examines Amnesty International's arguments for an increase in the minimum age of criminal responsibility and agrees that the age should be raised to at least 12.

Mental distress and human rights of asylum seekers

Purpose – This paper studies the experiences of asylum seekers in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between mental wellbeing, living conditions, and Australia’s detention policies in light of human rights. Design/methodology/approach – Using grounded theory, data were collected via observations, semi-structured interviews, key-informant interviews, and document analysis. Participants included seven asylum seekers and three professionals working with them. Findings – In light of a human rights framework, this paper reports on the mental distress suffered by asylum seekers in detention, the environments of constraint in which they live, and aspects of detention centre policy that contribute to these environments. The findings highlight a discrepancy between asylum seekers’ experiences under immigration detention policy and Australia’s human rights obligations. Research limitations/implications – This research indicates human rights violations for asylum seekers in detention in Australia. This research project involved a small number of participants and recommends systemic review of the policy and practices that affect asylum seekers’ mental health including larger numbers of participants. Consideration is made of alternatives to detention as well as improving detention centre conditions. The World Health Organization’s Quality Rights Tool Kit might provide the basis for a framework to review Australia’s immigration detention system with particular focus on the poor mental wellbeing of asylum seekers in detention. Originality/value – This study links international human rights law and Australian immigration detention policies and practices with daily life experiences of suffering mental distress within environments of constraint and isolation. It identifies asylum seekers as a vulnerable population with respect to human rights and mental wellbeing. Of particular value is the inclusion of asylum seekers themselves in interviews.

The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention 2014

The aim of the Inquiry was not to reconsider the Human Rights Commission’s already formed legal views of immigration detention, but to investigate how the health, wellbeing and development of children was being affected by life in detention. Through visits to 11 different detention centres, the Commission conducted interviews with 1129 children and parents in immigration detention in Australia, using a standardised questionnaire. The Commission also conducted 104 interviews with people in the community who had formerly been detained; received 239 submissions; held five public hearings with 41 witnesses, and obtained data from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

Hidden Men: Bearing witness to mandatory detention in Australia

The Australian government policy of mandatory immigration detention has been the subject of critique by human rights bodies and civil society. With many immigration detention facilities being located in remote sites, distance and expense means that few people get to observe detention practices in Australia directly. Through direct observations and through the voices of three men detained in the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre outside of the remote Western Australian town of Derby, the human costs of mandatory detention are presented and discussed. This is done through positioning this discussion as part of the process of bearing witness to mandatory detention in Australia.

A Demography and Taxonomy of Long-term Immigration Detention in Australia

The practice of long-term immigration detention is a relatively recent aspect of Australian Government policy. There has been much debate about the wisdom of such policy, raising concerns regarding the health of detainees, the dereliction of human rights, and the legal robustness of such practice. Despite considerable interest, little detail is available describing who is being held and the reasons for their long-term detention. This paper addresses this noticeable gap through a systematic analysis of the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Immigration Reports over the period 2005 through 2009. From such reporting it has been possible to produce a demographic profile of people held in Australian detention and to develop a taxonomy of the reasons contributing to the ongoing containment.

From Auschwitz to mandatory detention: biopolitics, race, and human rights in the Australian refugee camp

This article draws on Agamben's concept of homo sacer (bare-life) and his examination of the Muselmänner – the most de-humanised inhabitants of the Nazi concentration camp – to illuminate the ways that the policy and system of immigration detention in Australia signifies a continuation of the biopolitical paradigm that both created and supported the atrocity of Auschwitz. The article argues that the notion of race occupies a paradoxical position in the concept and body of the refugee in Australia today because while racism brings about and justifies the refugee's incarceration in the camp, the biopolitical processes of the camp create a subject within whom race becomes inevitably subsumed within and transcended by the ontology of bare-life. In this scheme, the question of human rights becomes ever more relevant but even less applicable. The article concludes with a critique of Agamben's key ideas as well as my application of them in light of Foucauldian and other interpretations of his work.

Challenge and collusion: health professionals and immigration detention in Australia

This article describes the impact of immigration detention on the health of asylum seekers. Drawing on specific examples, it explores the roles of professional staff working within the detention system and/or challenging the practices as advocates. Using oral testimony from a citizen-initiated campaign, The People's Inquiry into Detention, we interrogate the harmful experiences of force-feeding, deportation practices and the incarceration of children, including the role of the health professionals who sometimes betrayed their duty of care. Discussed are the paradoxes of dual loyalty and professional ethics.

Nursing in asylum seeker detention in Australia: care, rights and witnessing

The system of asylum seeker detention in Australia is one in which those seeking refuge are stripped of many of their rights, including the right to health. This presents serious...

Protecting Us from the Forces of Evil: Judicial and Non-Judicial Detention in Australia

[T]hese animals represent pure evil. These animals deserve never to see the exit sign at the prison gate. These animals are reviled and shunned by anyone who has ever heard of their heinous crimes. There is not a person in our community who does not need protection from these animals and the security of knowing they will never again be free. (Paul Whelan (Minister for Police) New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates Legislative Assembly, 8 May 1997, 8337) Australia has a history of detaining persons with (and without) judicial orders. In recent times various pieces of legislation authorising long-term detention of certain persons have been the subject of constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia. The challenges relate to legislation that authorises detention for purposes other than punishment for breaches of the criminal law. This paper will focus on a common argument running through all of these cases that the legislation under challenge offends the judicial power of the Commonwealth as enshrined in the Australian Constitution. In most of these cases the constitutional challenge has failed. Particular attention will be given to the rationale underlying these decisions that supports the validity of these laws by emphasising the need for protection: whether of the broader Australian community, or of the very individuals who have been detained. Detention for the purpose of providing such protection may be a legitimate use of legislative power, but it becomes less than clear whether such use of power is legitimate when it also functions in a punitive way.

Technologizing inhumanity

A political interview intended to justify refugee detention in Australia is analysed using an interdisciplinary critical discourse method. Barthesian semiotic theory in which the ‘Other’ is the foundation of national myth provides a context for a close textual analysis using Hallidayan linguistics. The lexico-grammatical analysis identifies features associated with processes (verbs), grammatical metaphors, and nominals. Essentially, the effect is to blunt agency and distance the speaker, but, more importantly, create a classificatory system that allows humans to be treated in certain ways according to bureaucratic procedures. The discursive strategy is labelled technologizing the inhumane because it objectifies the subjective, turning profound human issues into technical issues. Analysed discursively, the interview reveals how discursive control is established and how democracy is represented as impeding the orderly procedure of ‘objective’ procedures.

A comparison of the mental health of refugees with temporary versus permanent protection visas

To determine the impact of the Australian provisions for temporary rather than permanent protection for asylum seekers found to be genuine refugees. A comparison of the mental health of Persian-speaking refugees with temporary (n = 49) versus permanent (n = 67) protection visas attending an early intervention program in Sydney, New South Wales, 2002-03. Standard measures were used to assess past trauma, detention experiences, postmigration stresses, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression and functional impairment. The two groups had experienced similar levels of past trauma and persecution. Nevertheless, holders of temporary protection visas (TPVs) returned higher scores on three psychiatric symptom measures (P < 0.001). Multivariate analyses showed that TPV status was the strongest predictor of anxiety, depression and particularly PTSD. Further analyses suggested that, for TPV holders, experience of past stresses in detention in Australia and ongoing living difficulties after release contributed to adverse psychiatric outcomes. The sequence of postmigration stresses experienced by TPV holders appears to impact adversely on their mental health.

Arbitrary Detention in Australia: Detention of Unlawful Non-Citizens under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth)

Australia, with the exception of its indigenous peoples, is a land of recent migrants. Our national anthem proclaims that, 'For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share.' However, this has never been an unconditional offer. Immigration laws in Australia have often disclosed a 'deeply xenophobic hostility' toward foreigners. Fear of the yellow peril, the supposed hordes of Chinese, 'bent on overrunning White Australia and destroying its way of life forever', prompted racially discriminatory immigration restrictions as early as 1855. One of the first statutes passed after Federation was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901(Cth), which introduced the dictation test by which the White Australia policy was implemented.

Arbitrary Detention in Australia: Detention of Unlawful Non-Citizens under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth)

Australia, with the exception of its indigenous peoples, is a land of recent migrants. Our national anthem proclaims that, 'For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share.' However, this has never been an unconditional offer. Immigration laws in Australia have often disclosed a 'deeply xenophobic hostility' toward foreigners. Fear of the yellow peril, the supposed hordes of Chinese, 'bent on overrunning White Australia and destroying its way of life forever', prompted racially discriminatory immigration restrictions as early as 1855. One of the first statutes passed after Federation was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901(Cth), which introduced the dictation test by which the White Australia policy was implemented.

The Irregular Migrant as Homo Sacer: Migration and Detention in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand

Abstract This paper looks at aspects of the detention of irregular migrants in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The principle intention of the paper is to study detention of irregular migrants as a means of understanding politics and how notions of political participation and of sovereignty are affected by the detention of certain sorts of individual. What does the identification of certain “forms of life” to be detained say about the political norms of different societies? The conduit for this examination will be the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's concept of homo sacer. Homo sacer is a term Agamben extrapolates from “ancient Roman law”. It denotes a naked or bare life that is depoliticized. Homo sacer is the excess of processes of political constitution that create a governable form of life. Homo sacer is thus exempt or excluded from the normal limits of the state. At the same time, however, homo sacer is not simply cast out but is held in particular relation to the norm: it is through the exclusion of the depoliticized form of life that the politicized norm exists. This essay seeks to contextualize aspects of Agamben's argument by looking at detention as a form of exclusion in three different contexts.

In the Eyes of a Child — Behind the Wire: Education for Children in Mandatory Detention in Australia

Public concern for the well-being of children held in detention in Australia has been revealed through a National Inquiry. Evidence indicates that children are detrimentally affected by the detention environment on many levels. The discussion here focuses on the question of education. A ‘dual strategic approach’ is advocated, which calls for the urgent needs of children to be met within a context of concerted measures to end mandatory detention.

History, memory and the stranger in the practice of detention in Australia

History, memory and the stranger in the practice of detention in Australia