The Australian federal police website proudly states that one of its central roles is to “play a lead role in keeping Australians safe from terrorism”.
So it’s extremely disturbing to discover that the joint counter terrorism team (JCTT), which comprises Australian federal police, Victoria police and Asio members, has in fact been found by a magistrate to have actually radicalised an individual in the course of a counter terrorism investigation.
It’s scarcely believable that, as the court found, the JCTT encouraged an autistic 13-year-old boy in his nascent and naive fixation with Islamic State. The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons and known by the pseudonym Thomas Carrick, is an NDIS recipient and has an IQ of 71. By any measure he is clearly an extremely vulnerable young man.
The JCTT waited until Thomas was 14 (and therefore criminally responsible) before charging him. Those charges were subsequently thrown out by Magistrate Lesley Fleming, who was scathing in her judgement:
“The community would not expect law enforcement officers to encourage a 13-14 year-old child towards racial hatred, distrust of police and violent extremism, encouraging the child’s fixation on ISIS.
“The conduct engaged in by the JCTT and the AFP falls so profoundly short of the minimum standards expected of law enforcement offices [sic] that to refuse this [stay] application would be to condone and encourage further instances of such conduct.”
Under questioning in the Senate, AFP deputy commissioner Ian McCartney said it was not their “intent” to further radicalise the boy during the undercover operation. “The person was on the path to radicalisation long before we became involved, long before Victoria police became involved.”
As shocking as this individual case may be, it fits an appalling pattern in the way Australian police forces deal with the most vulnerable people in society. Our marginalised youth, those living with disability and First Nations people are policed in a way that the majority of us would not recognise, nor tolerate.
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability found evidence of a systematic criminalisation of disability across Australia. The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission of New South Wales has found that NSW police were operating discriminatory programs to target Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth, which led to them being consistently overrepresented as targets of suspicion and criminalised as a result. A Wollongong University study found that bicycle helmet laws were being used for purposes unrelated to safety, including “gathering intelligence about offences and suspects, justifying searches and harassing targeted individuals – particularly young Aboriginal people”.
These are just a few examples of intersecting and compounding forms of violence and harm that police cause to First Nations, LGBTQ+, culturally and linguistically diverse people and communities, young people and the elderly, people with disabilities and people experiencing mental ill-health, suicidal ideation, domestic, family and/or sexual violence, homelessness, poverty and substance use or dependence.
The reports and statistics are one thing. But behind every young person treated unfairly by the police lies a promising life in ruins, a family in distress and a nation failing its own people.
Meanwhile, we have seen with alarming regularity that when police are first responders to a person having a mental health crisis, it can have fatal consequences. National Justice Project lawyers have spent the past two years working for the family of one such man, Todd McKenzie, who was shot and killed by police when alone and having a psychotic episode inside his own home in Taree. The coroner will hand down her findings in early April.
The police have a responsibility to prevent crime but the criminal justice system should be a last resort where vulnerable lives are at stake. All efforts should be made to provide support to young people instead of delivering brutality and punishment. What is perhaps most disturbing about Thomas’s case is that many of us believe that we can rely on the police to keep us safe but here the police took an active role in encouraging a highly impressionable young man to commit a crime. Instead of being the bulwark against crime, they were found by the court to have actively encouraged it. Instead of working with his family to de-escalate their concerns, the police further radicalised a teenager and then waited until he was old enough to charge him with a crime.
And why do the police act like this – with Thomas and so many other people on the margins of society? Because they can.
If Thomas had come from a wealthy family and attended a private school, would the police have acted the way they did? If you live with a disability or come from a vulnerable section of society, different rules seem to apply.
Sadly, in 2024 in Australia, some police appear to think it’s standard operating procedure to criminalise being disabled, young, poor, LGBTQ+, being a person of colour or First Nations.
This is old fashioned Deep South 1950s US-style segregation but done by subterfuge. And it’s a national disgrace.
George Newhouse and Duncan Fine are two of the founders and directors of the National Justice Project, a human rights law firm fighting systemic discrimination
In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org
