Public Inquiry Research Articles

A case study on public inquiry engagement with vulnerable witnesses and on putting participants at the heart of the public inquiry process: insights from the Muckamore Abbey Hospital Inquiry

A case study on public inquiry engagement with vulnerable witnesses and on putting participants at the heart of the public inquiry process: insights from the Muckamore Abbey Hospital Inquiry

Colonial enquiry, pathology and the making of the ‘Afghan crisis’ (c. 1857–1878)

ABSTRACT Two powerful and intersecting themes continue to bear on the framing of Afghanistan in international politics: Afghanistan’s rendering as a place of pathology and continuing crisis, uncertainty, and transition – and ‘our’ ability to intervene, articulate strategy (politically, militarily, economically or otherwise), or retaliate at will. Conventionally, the idea of inquiry is understood as a state-led process of investigation, often undertaken after intervention or the departure of occupying militaries. The article attempts to widen the notion of inquiry by approaching it from a historical perspective and in a historicizing manner, focusing on colonial enquiry as the making of interventionist rationales that underpinned the unleashing of colonial military violence in the service of empire in history. The paper affords colonial enquiry a place in thinking about modern, state-led, public inquiry. The article’s chronology is roughly bookended by the two Anglo-Afghan Wars of the nineteenth century (ca. 1839–1843 and 1878–1881, respectively). In the ideational build-up of imperial intervention prior to 1878, discourses of medicine in the broadest sense provided an important enrichment of the vocabulary and intellectual thought frameworks of colonial intervention. As a result, the entanglement of medicine and politics resulted in a quasi-humanitarian argument for military violence. The pathologization of Afghanistan undergirds a broader objectification of Afghanistan that is colonial enquiry. Concluding the article are sections on the manifold legacies of the Second Anglo-Afghan war and on ‘our’ approaches to inquiry.

Transparency in action or political fiction? The pre-inquiry phase of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry

AbstractThis article examines how public inquiries come into being through a detailed analysis of the pre-inquiry phase of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry. We focus on two key points of contestation—around the timing of the inquiry and its terms of reference—and suggest that what is at stake during the pre-stage of an inquiry is its ontological and epistemological orientation. Our analysis traces the emergence of two distinct positions during this phase: a grassroots position (conceiving of the inquiry as a response to the experience of collective grief) and an official position (conceiving of the inquiry as a means of learning lessons). Particular attention is given to the latter position and what it reveals about the rhetorical function of transparency in confirming a political commitment to institutional accountability, at the same time as working towards a particular conception of the inquiry as a practical task, expansive in remit, and future oriented.

Making the most of a captive audience: Do specialist teams in custodial settings offer a way to assist people to access the NDIS?

AbstractWhile the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been operating in Australia for 10 years, numerous eligible people with disability have not accessed the scheme, many of whom are in prison. The South Australian Government, in partnership with the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), implemented a pilot programme to assist people in prison to access the NDIS as having NDIS supports on release may reduce the risk of returning to custody. This qualitative study, drawing on interviews with 20 stakeholders, explores the enablers and barriers of assisting people with disability in prison access the NDIS. Our findings show that while custodial settings provide opportunities to assist people with disability to have their eligibility for the NDIS assessed, prisons are difficult settings in which to undertake subsequent assessment and planning processes to determine the supports available on release. People with disability exiting prison also face significant challenges accessing suitable accommodation and support services, particularly when their needs are complex. Further work is required to ensure planning and assessment processes meet the needs of this group. The findings provide useful insights to both justice and other institutional settings and respond to many of the questions raised by recent public inquiries and reviews.

Emerging Infectious Disease Outbreak Response: Exploring the Sensemaking Process of an Expert Advisory Group

ABSTRACTThe COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of crisis research, particularly in the response phase. This research explores long duration crisis sensemaking of an Expert Advisory Group (EAG) during an emerging disease outbreak which has implications for the conduct of COVID‐19 public inquiries. The members of the Ontario SARS Scientific Advisory Committee (OSSAC) for the 2003 SARS outbreak in Canada, provide the context for this study. Among their duties, these experts were tasked to write directives (mandated protocols) that govern all aspects of hospital life, such as the protocol for transferring SARS patients. Data were collected in multiple forms, including: public inquiry reports, meeting minutes, newspaper articles, and interviews. Following a constructivist grounded theory strategy, several iterations of data collection and analysis were completed. The findings include a conceptual framework that depicts the sensemaking process and illuminates the relationship between retrospective (after an event has occurred) and prospective (future‐oriented) sensemaking.

Systemic Failings or “Isolated Incidents”? A Discourse Analysis of Corporate Blame Avoidance for the Mistreatment of Immigration Detainees

This article draws on data from a major public inquiry in the UK to examine how the multinational corporation G4S sought to avoid blame for the mistreatment of immigration detainees in its care. Our analysis is based on a critical discourse analysis of oral and written evidence given by G4S and one of the company’s managing directors to the Brook House Inquiry. We show how discursive strategies of blame avoidance were prominent features of this evidence, including the scapegoating of individual custody officers, the legitimation of the profit-seeking management of immigration detention and the de-legitimation of those who brought the mistreatment of detainees to light. The article contributes to our understanding of the discursive practices employed by powerful actors to limit corporate responsibility for systemic failings.

A statutory public inquiry is not always the most effective vehicle for learning lessons in the NHS

A statutory public inquiry is not always the most effective vehicle for learning lessons in the NHS

Making public or quiet listening? Media logics and public inquiries into the abuse of children

This article examines the tensions between ‘publicness’ and ‘privacy’ in national commissions of inquiry. Through the insights of those who worked deep inside Australia's landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RCIRCSA, 2013–2017), and the evidence provided in its final report, we explore the organisational and media logics of the Commission's highly publicised public hearings, and the ‘quiet’ institutional listening practices of its private sessions and engagement with marginalised communities. Royal Commissions are an important mechanism for raising awareness of past crimes on the public agenda. Our research finds that while the revelatory outcomes of the RCIRCSA have been well documented, its private sessions, engagement and research are less well understood. We argue ‘publicness’ is a relatively unchallenged good that is enacted through news media and the royal commission process, but media logics can limit their capacity to address the ongoing causes and impacts of child sexual abuse against the most impacted children. Participants reflected on the media logics that drove strategic decisions to ‘make public’ some cases and institutions, while others remained in the Commission's private realm. The article concludes that the confidential sharing of evidence has been undervalued in inquiry media studies that often centre the journalists’ role in uncovering and publicly revealing previously unheard stories. Drawing on international comparisons we find that while quiet listening risks negating the opportunity to amplify experience, it may also counter the potential silencing effects of unwanted public media scrutiny and protect potential witnesses from further harm.

The prevalence of child sexual abuse perpetrated by leaders or other adults in religious organizations in Australia

BackgroundNumerous national public inquiries have highlighted the problem of child sexual abuse in religious organizations. Despite this, evidence of population-wide prevalence is scarce. ObjectiveTo provide the first nationally representative prevalence estimates of child sexual abuse perpetrated by adults in religious organizations in Australia. MethodsThe Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) surveyed 8503 people aged 16 and over about their experiences of child maltreatment. Weighted prevalence estimates were calculated based on responses to the child sexual abuse questions from the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire-R2: Adapted Version (ACMS). ResultsOne in 250 people reported being sexually abused as a child by an adult in a religious organization (0.4 %, 95 % CI, 0.3–0.6 %). Men reported significantly higher rates of child sexual abuse by these perpetrators (0.8 %, 95 % CI, 0.5–1.2 %), compared to women (0.1 %, 95 % CI, 0–0.3 %). This type of sexual abuse was overwhelmingly perpetrated by men (0.4 %, 95 % CI, 0.3–0.6 %), compared to women (0 %, 95 % CI, 0–0.1 %), and was substantially more often experienced in Catholic organizations (71.9 %) than other Christian denominations or other religions. Prevalence of child sexual abuse in religious organizations has declined over time (2.2 % of men 65 years and older, compared with 0.2 % of 16–24-year-old men). ConclusionsChild sexual abuse has been widespread in religious organizations in Australia. A decline over time indicates progress has been made in preventing sexual abuse of children. Religious organizations must take all reasonable measures to prevent child sexual abuse, with a particular need for interventions targeting male leaders, and organizational cultures.

Reflections on the aftermath of the Whittingham Hospital inquiry

Peter Nolan details the history of Whittingham Hospital and provides a personal account of concerns expressed by staff and students following the first public inquiry into the psychiatric hospital.

Atmosphere, imminence and the Manchester Arena Inquiry: on the affective modalities of becoming situationally aware to urban terrorism

ABSTRACT Building situational awareness has become a central logic among contemporary security apparatuses for abating no-warning urban terrorism. Situational awareness, we contend, casts the sensory, perceptual and affective capacities of human bodies to decipher their immediate surroundings and attune to the non-representational and more-than-known of an enfolding situation, as essential to its execution. What modalities of sense-making and attunement, then, does this burgeoning security rationality demand? And what sensibilities, affectivities and subjectivities are (re)produced and legitimated across urban life? In this paper, we unpack these questions by examining the ways affective and atmospheric attunement(s) are infused within orthodox and emergent security approaches for developing and honing situational awareness. We argue that affective atmospheres in particular furnish the theoretical architecture for attending to the spatio-affective-material registers through which imminence becomes palpable. Empirically, by analysing the Public Inquiry following the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, we elucidate where the Inquiry advanced discussions on (the limits of) situational awareness and its sensorial, affective and atmospheric dimensions, thereby extending situational awareness into an atmospheric agenda within urban geopolitics. Finally, we reflect on how the impending UK Protect Duty might reconfigure the legal landscape of situational awareness, city resilience, and the affective economies of (in)attention.

Relational processes for transformative climate justice policymaking: insights from a Western Australian community of practice

ABSTRACT This article explores how relational approaches to policymaking across multiple levels and sectors of society might enable transformative climate justice. It draws on a unique case study from the state of Western Australia (WA), where climate justice is thwarted by the coloniality of climate politics and the hegemony of the fossil fuel industry. It examines the relational processes of a climate and health community of practice (CoP) in WA that involves people across the health sector, public service, non-government, and community. The CoP had an important role in enabling the WA Government’s public inquiry into climate change and health in 2019–2020, which stimulated a range of new policies, strategies, and inquiries in the state’s climate policy subsystem where meaningful climate action was previously lacking. To understand how relational processes and practices may have enabled the Inquiry, and their transformative potential, a participatory action research study was undertaken. This article reports on findings from interviews and collective analysis with co-researchers including advocates, public servants, and practitioners working at the intersection of climate and health in WA. The Inquiry was in part enabled by relational practices and processes, demonstrated through a Community of Practice, relational organizing, and diverse advocacy coalitions. The article then applies an Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis to assess the transformative potential of a relational approach to climate-responsive policymaking. The analysis reveals persistent inequities concerning recognitional and procedural climate justice and suggests ways that diverse actors involved in policymaking can use a relational approach to address them.

“I lived but I wasn’t alive”: Examining responses of formal systems to child sexual abuse as described in survivors’ testimonies to the Israeli Independent Public Inquiry

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a prominent global issue with a multitude of negative health, social, and economic consequences. However, this abuse is often under-reported and misunderstood, alongside faults within the systems built to support CSA survivors. There has been a global effort to establish CSA inquiries investigating past incidents of CSA, using the findings to inform and reform policy and practice and pursue justice for CSA survivors. In 2020, The Israeli Independent Public Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse was founded, collecting 505 rich, diverse, and informative testimonies from adult survivors of CSA in Israel. The current study analyzes the 505 testimonies to explore the ways formal systems of support in Israel responded to CSA survivors and how these responses impacted survivors. Inductive thematic analysis was performed, yielding three main themes: 1) displays of how formal systems failed to respond to CSA, 2) mechanisms behind the failures of formal systems in their responses to CSA, and 3) consequences of the failures of formal systems to respond to CSA. This study demonstrates the tremendous impact formal systems’ responses can have on survivors, underscoring the urgent need for a systematic change in how CSA survivors are treated. Current systems have led to the violation of children’s rights, re-traumatization of survivors, and even discouraged survivors from seeking help after abuse. This study concludes that many adaptations must be made to formal systems’ current responses to CSA in Israel to improve support for CSA survivors, advance child protection, and recognize the unique needs of minority communities.

Participatory and proactive: real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance for the alternative care of children

Purpose This study aims to make the case for real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance as a new foundation for the regulation and systemisation of multiple rights in recordkeeping for the Alternative Care of children and young people. Design/methodology/approach This article aims to make the case for real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance as a new foundation for the regulation and systemisation of multiple rights in recordkeeping for the Alternative Care of children and young people. It investigates this concept using the Australian context as a critical case study to highlight some of the current limitations in Australian Alternative Care systems in the way recordkeeping rights are represented in existing regulatory frameworks and monitored in practice. This paper will argue for the need for systemic transformations in child protection and information legislation and regulatory systems to better represent and enact alternative care recordkeeping rights. Findings This analysis of the legislative provisions for participation in recordkeeping and access to records of Care experiences against the Australian Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care reveals a number of limitations. While the direct provision of rights to access records and the strengthening of principles of participation in some of the jurisdictions are welcome, it illustrates how the risk-oriented focus of the legislation on child protection investigations and substantiations encodes opaque recordkeeping practices and works against the provision of the full suite of childhood recordkeeping rights envisaged by the charter. Furthermore, without provisions for systemic and dynamic oversight, those with Care experiences are left to pursue individual outcomes against significant bureaucratic odds. Research limitations/implications In line with international recognition that active participation and proactive provision of rights are a protective factor, this article contends that governance frameworks need to be proactively designed to respect and enact recordkeeping rights, along with requiring mechanisms for real-time monitoring and oversight if the records problems of the past are not to be perpetuated. Practical implications The study’s proposal for the need for a real-time, rights-based recordkeeping governance seeks to address the systemic recordkeeping problems that have been identified in research and public inquiry related to Alternative Care systems in Australia as well as in the UK. Social implications Adopting a governance model that prioritises real-time, rights-based principles will ultimately impact how the Alternative Care system approaches records and their value in the processes of care. Originality/value Placing real-time rights-based governance at the foundation of a reimagining of the Alternative Care recordkeeping model offers the potential to create a system that places rights in recordkeeping and ethics of care at its core. This has highly transformative potential for the overall Alternative Care system and its relationship with children in out-of-home care.

Making sense of state violence: understanding public inquiries as political devices

ABSTRACT Whenever a political scandal or controversy erupts, one is likely to hear a familiar demand: ‘There must be a public inquiry!’. Inquiries are institutions of last resort, instigated only when something has gone wrong or must be urgently done, where the usual mechanisms of the state are found wanting. Often the focus of inquiries has been that which the state claims as its monopoly: the use of violence. There is a long and chequered history of inquiries appointed to investigate the state’s use of violence in (post)colonial contexts, military interventions and police actions. This special issue interrogates this history, contributing to wider debates in Critical Military Studies on war and violence. Inquiries are acts of epistemic sovereignty that seek to establish authoritative interpretations of events, and this has sometimes led to a dichotomous representation of inquiries as either promising fora for democratic accountability or tools for elite interests. This special issue seeks to overcome this dichotomy through interdisciplinary dialogue and a granular examination of the political cultures and epistemic practices of inquiries into state violence. In so doing, these articles offer a nuanced analysis of the political functions of inquiries and their potential for democratic accountability and justice.

Lessons from Australian family law appeals jurisdiction

ABSTRACT Much has been researched, written about, and subjected to public enquiry with respect to the content of Australian family law arrangements. This study adds to current understanding by the examination of the records of all successful appeals of parenting orders under the recently adopted regime of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Division 1 Appellate Jurisdiction. Drawing on transcripts from this Court to the date of writing, 35% of applications to appeal parenting orders were successful in being granted a rehearing or variation by the Appellate Jurisdiction. It is these cases which form the basis for this analysis. Employing an inductive thematic analysis, it has been possible to identify the pattern of circumstances most likely to lead to the compromise of the delivery of the declared principles of clear, predictable, and accessible law. Learning from the record of successful appeals, it becomes evident that the Appeals Court plays a relatively unappreciated critical role in identifying the context and nature of risks in the delivery of these core principles and what should be a central focus for attention.

Medication management in long-term care: using evidence generated from real-world data to effect policy change in the Australian setting.

Older individuals residing in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) are often living with multimorbidity and exposed to polypharmacy, and many experience medication-related problems. Because randomized controlled trials seldom include individuals in LTCFs, pharmacoepidemiological studies using real-world data are essential sources of new knowledge on the utilization, safety and effectiveness of pharmacotherapies and related health outcomes in this population. In this commentary, we discuss recent pharmacoepidemiological research undertaken to support the investigations and recommendations of a landmark public inquiry into the quality and safety of care provided in the approximately 3,000 Australian LTCFs which house over 240,000 residents annually and informed subsequent national medication-related policy reforms. Suitable sources of real-world data for pharmacoepidemiological studies in long-term care cohorts and methodological considerations are also discussed.

Trauma in Publishing

We live in an extraordinary time in human history. Arguably, the most significant social changes have taken place in recent decades, including changes in policy and attitudes towards human rights, how we educate and treat children, towards sexual violence and abuse, sexuality and gender identification, to name just a few. In Australia, we have witnessed public responses through Royal Commissions and other public inquiries that have given voice to generations of people whose suffering had been silenced by formal and informal social mechanisms. Now, in the twenty-first century, the proliferation of new technologies, social media and social campaigns designed to engage people online as well as offline have empowered citizens to take control of their narratives, to tell their own stories. In the published literature, a great many have begun to reveal the nature and extent of traumas experienced by individuals, families, groups and entire communities. In the publishing industry, scant attention is given to the occupational risks faced by the workforce charged with disseminating these trauma stories: the editors, literary agents, proofreaders, publicists and other publishing personnel who are repeatedly exposed to trauma narratives. Even as publishing facilitates healing through story, it is also perpetuating—or at the very least enabling—the transmission of trauma: from author to publishing personnel, and quite possibly also from industry to reader. This paper posits that publishing as an industry is awash with trauma. Through the perspective of an industry insider, it explores the three faces of trauma in the publishing context: recounting trauma as a vehicle for healing and reconciliation, the trauma narrative as a commodity and vicarious trauma as an occupational hazard.

Path Reinforcer or Policy Accelerator? COVID-19 and Scandinavian Social Protection Reform Trajectories

A pandemic may change the use of social protection systems. In this article, we compare Scandinavian reform trajectories of unemployment benefits and sickness benefits following the COVID-19 pandemic. From an institutional theory perspective, we have analyzed official documents on regulations proposed in government bills, public inquiries, reports, and secondary literature published between March 2020 and December 2023, as well as interview data from key actors representing the state, the social partners, and related stakeholder organizations. The findings show that Denmark and Norway implemented mostly provisional reforms and thus ended in path reinforcement. In Sweden, on the contrary, numerous provisional reforms during the pandemic turned out to become permanent in the post-pandemic period. As the pandemic legitimized permanent changes that in some cases had been debated for a long time in Sweden, it thus came to act as a path-clearing policy accelerator.

Studentexamen under 1900-talets början

Student examination at the beginning of the 20th century – A study of exam questions between 1901 and 1930. The purpose of this article is to examine the subject and knowledge ideals that emerge in the student questions posed in secondary school exams in the subject of Swedish from 1901 until 1930, particularly questions directed towards history or questions reminiscent of social studies. Sweden was in a significant social transformation with major political divides during the early 1900s, which is partly similar to Sweden’s situation today. The theoretical framework in this article is based on the concepts of pre-modernity and modernity, with an approach that leans towards the German didactic tradition. The primary material is secondary school exam questions, but it has also been supplemented with the government’s public inquiries and statistics, as well as educational historical articles. The method was thematic analysis with a deductive approach, which involved categorizing student questions. One result that this study shows is that there is continuity in history questions. There were always three questions, one about Sweden, one about ancient Rome or Greece, and one about Europe. Another result is that students preferred to answer questions related to the history subject rather than other subjects. A third result is the effect on student exam questions by the increasing modern society, especially in the field that later became a field of its own, social studies.