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Culturally appropriate human rights compliant: police custody monitoring expectations
Australia has ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT), a United Nations human rights treaty. A domestic monitoring body is called the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM). In Australia, the NPM is a multi-body entity whose members have been nominated/designated by federal, state and territory governments.
These police custody expectations provide a suite of practical resources to support police custody oversight and strengthen domestic implementation of the OPCAT. They are living documents that can be adapted and updated by individual NPM bodies as suits them best. They are intended to be a practical monitoring tool that is a ‘launching pad’ for the Australian NPM’s police custody monitoring work. Developed through consultation, the publications provide a flexible, culturally informed toolkit to assist detention oversight bodies within the NPM across jurisdictions.
NPM members are just one mechanism among a host of bodies and individuals striving for the prevention of, accountability for, and redress for torture and ill-treatment of detained Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. As such, these expectations will assist other actors who are similarly working towards an end to torture and ill-treatment of detained people.
The resources present implementation of a number of recommendations from the author's '2018 Churchill Fellowship to investigate overseas practices of monitoring places of detention' which considered culturally appropriate oversight of conditions of detention and treatment of detained Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people in the Northern Territory’s criminal justice system – in compliance with the OPCAT.
Resources
- Police custody expectations: executive summary
- Police custody expectations: introduction
- Police custody expectations: practical detention monitoring guidance
- Police custody expectations: identifying the root causes of ill-treatment
- Police custody expectations: aide memoire.
