RLC in the media

Plans to expand NSW police powers would encourage officers to arrest people for spurious reasons and to hold them in custody even if they face only financial penalties, legal experts have warned.

THE charging of domestic violence victims who retract allegations should be approved only at the highest levels of state police forces or by directors of public prosecution, says the Australian Law Reform Commission.

RLC's Police Powers solicitor, David Porter, spoke with Eleanor Bell on ABC Radio National's PM show, on measures to address youth crime.

The impulsive need to condemn is a reaction to our inability to describe why riots happen in some disadvantaged areas and not others. We should be making a concerted effort to separate the process of identifying and punishing criminal acts from understanding why they happen, particularly on a large scale. Instead we get the constant insistence that people are rational moral actors — and that violence has no place in a reasonable society.