Evaluation of the Criminal Justice System in Australia

This study evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the criminal justice system in Australia, focusing on politics, law and order, media representation, the role of courts, and restorative justice. Recommendations for improvements to the government are also provided.

Criminal justice system

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main body........................................................................................................................................3
Politics, law and order and media representation........................................................................3
The criminal justice system: the courts.......................................................................................5
Restorative justice........................................................................................................................6
Recommendation for improvements to government...................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The government of Australia for the protection and safeguarding of the people made the various
rules and regulations, and criminal justice system is one of them. The present study is related
with evaluation of strength and weaknesses of the criminal justice system of Australia by
considering its significant aspects. It is a very broad aspect, therefore in the given study some of
the elements such as politics, law and orders, media representation, the role of court, restorative
justice are considered for evaluation.
MAIN BODY
Criminal justice system refers as a process which is essential for controlling and mitigating the
crime and charging the penalties for the conducting of crime. In other words, it can be said that it
is the system comprising of the laws and regulations which safeguards the interest of the member
and their possessions (Feeley, 2017). It ascertains the events which result in damage or offences
to the member of the community, and by imposing the penalties, fines or imprisonment, the
criminal offender may be punished.
The criminal justice system is greatly impacted by the courts, restorative justice, politics, law and
order and media representation.
Politics, law and order and media representation
There are nine legal systems in Australia, involving one federal system and eight state systems.
The constitution of Australia gives the power to the Commonwealth to make the norms of the
specific matter stated in the constitution such as matter related with the taxation in the country,
defence and external affairs, commerce and trade and many others (Davis, 2018). Further, the
state and regions possess the independent legislative power for making the norms for all those
matters on which the constitution does not provide any specific right to the commonwealth. By
considering all the criminal laws of Australia, generally, the day to day lives of the resident of
Australia are governed by the state and territory rules and regulations.
There is the existence of the two-tier structure in the parliament. It assists in the protection of the
human right, as because all the bills approved by the parliament must be looked over by the

Upper house of the parliament. If the bills are against the right of a human, then it will not be
passed by the upper house of the parliament (Burgess-Proctor, Huebner, & Durso, 2016). Along
with this, there is five expressed right given under the constitution such as freedom of religion,
purchasing the properties on the prescribed terms and many others. These rights are in the
written form and cannot be amended easily. Therefore, it leads to the safeguarding the rights of
the community. Moreover, commonwealth parliament also does not have any right to introduce
any rule by which the restriction on the express rights can be imposed (Simmons, 2017).
Despite all the power, the constitution has some weaknesses also, as there are only five
expressed power incorporated in the constitution, which are very limited and mainly connected
with the civil and political right and therefore the community trust on the high court to protect
their rights. Further for adding the more express rights in the constitution, the process is very
lengthy and difficult which leads to the safeguarding the rights more cramping (Goel, Rao &
Shroff, 2016).
Further, the perception of the community is significantly impacted by the interaction of the
media and the criminal justice system. The main objective of the Australian media is to desire to
spread the news, educate and entertain the people (Schwartz & Beaver, 2016). The capability of
the media gets events into the lives of the community, no issue how far they are and assist them
visible and expressive results for achieving the above objectives. Further the selecting coverage
of criminal trials, the setting of the agenda as well as framing of the informed in such a manner
which offers the main role of the entertainment of media (Clair, & Winter, 2016). The difference
between the trust of the public on the media for news and entertainment objective of the media
leads to conflict between the goals achieved and goal pursued. Despite this, the public still relies
on the media as a tool to understand and evaluate the criminal justice system and the process
comprising within this system (Klein, Remis & Elm, 2015).
The education system of the media underestimated because of its entertainment objective.
Therefore the final outcome is significantly different from informative and meaningful news. In
Australia, the community has the right to freedom of speech; such freedom had no trust on legal
assurance (Simmons, 2016). On the other hand, only by implementing such right the community
member can express their opinion of the several actions that may require the political decision or
the actions. Therefore, this leads to the positive as well as negative impact.

The criminal justice system: the courts
The fundamental pillar of the criminal justice system is represented by the court of Australia.
The court and the tribunal play a great role at the time of determination of the criminal charge or
the rights and duties in any case as per the prescribed law. In Australia, the constitution
establishes the independent, fair and competent tribunal in which the person shall entitle the
impartial and public hearing (van Dijk, Kalidien, & Choenni, 2018). In other words, it can be
said that all person has an equal right before the tribunal and the court.
Sometimes, at the time of hearing the press and public are not included because of the ethics,
security of the country, matters related with the private information of the involved parties.
However, all the issues related with the criminal justice must be made public except the matter
related to matrimonial disputes or children guardianship. The decision of the court is only based
on the provision contained in the law. Further, section 75 and 76 empower the high court to
construe the wording stated in the constitution. It permits the court to rule and ascertain whether
the rules made by the constitution have respected the rights of the community. At the time of
making a decision, the high court can pronounce the legislation invalid and thus leads to the
protection of the right. Further, there is the implied right available to the high court to confirm
that the constitution remains updated and related. Moreover, it has also the right to apply the
flexibility at the time of interpreting the words for accepting the moving principles of the
community.
The legal system of Australia is very slow, and it takes a long time to arrive at a conclusion.
Along with this, it is very expensive to get legal assistance. Generally, the unemployed person, a
person with any disability or single parent found difficulty related with the legal system. Further,
the high court has very limited power to protect the rights of the people because the constitution
only prevents the low making strength of the Commonwealth parliament and not of the state.
Moreover, the implied rights of the high court sometime lead to the difficulty as it permits the
high court to infer meanings of the words stated in the constitution, if the interpretation made by
the high court is very flexible then it results in the biases with the community as well as with
commonwealth.

Restorative justice
Restorative justice refers as a framework, which is created with the main objective of repairing
the harm raised by the criminal offence. It is applicable only in a situation where the offender
accepted their crime (Strang, & Braithwaite, 2017). This justice is implemented by the
cooperative process that permits the meeting of all the desired parties.
The restorative justice has several benefits. In this system, the community can be part of the
decision making process with respect to the deal with the incident. It builds the responsibility of
the community and related accountability. Further, they can give attention to their related as
victims (Payne & Welch, 2015). It also provides the opportunity for victims to get the
information from the offender by which he/she can understand the purpose behind that incident.
Victims also directly express the person how their action affected them and can ask for the
compensation (Skelton, 2018). Along with this, in this system, the offender gets the opportunity
to take the accountability related with the crime and make the face-to-face conversation with the
victims and the people in respect to compensate the harm (Daly, 2017).
Despite all the above advantages, this system has some limitation also. The restorative justice
system is not applicable for all offenders, it is available only those offenders who have accepted
their crime but victims may reject their offer, and therefore it is not regarded as the universal
solution for addressing the problems. There may be a possibility that victim may unnecessarily
try to shame the offender, which is not the objective of the system (Bouffard, Cooper, &
Bergseth, 2017).
Recommendation for improvements to government
The government is the representative body in which the member selected by the majority of the
people participates. Therefore the laws made by the government reflects the values of the
majority of people. However sometimes the undue influence of some people may lead to appease
a minority group. Further the people also less confident about the criminal justice institution,
therefore for enhancing the viewpoint that institution is acting on behalf of the citizen the court
must build the strategic plan, time to time survey and use the social media for spreading the
public information. Along with this, some rules and regulation must be made for the media,
which leads to the prevention of ambiguous information to the public.

CONCLUSION
On the basis of the above study, it has been seen that politics, law and order, media, court and
restorative justice significantly impact the criminal justice system. The main objective is to
safeguard and protection of the community by applying fairness, transparency and accountability
in the process of the criminal justice system.

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