Bizarre law enforcement practices and courts are not restricted to inanimate things, trees and animals. Museums all over Europe bear witness to the cruel creativity of humans when it comes to ways of torturing their own kind.
The medieval Iron Maiden was an iron coffin in which inward-facing rows of spikes pointed at the victim, who was slowly pierced from all directions as the coffin was shut.
The rack was the torture tool of the Spanish Inquisition. The victim’s arms and legs were tied with ropes to rollers at each end of a wooden frame. As the cranks of the rollers were turned, the ropes tightened, and the victim’s limbs were stretched, causing excruciating pain.
The thumbscrew consisted of a vice and two metal plates between which a victim’s thumb was placed. The vice was then tightened, and the thumb slowly crushed.
The Spanish Boot was a device for torturing a victim’s lower legs. The legs were placed into a pair of tightly fitting iron boots. Wooden wedges were then inserted between the boot and the victim’s skin. Mallets were then used to drive the wedges in, first causing abrasions and
lesions and, ultimately, breaking bones. Some versions featured inward-pointing spikes, nails or blades to worsen the effect.
The Breaking Wheel was a wagon wheel with spokes onto which the victim was tied so that their limbs were woven between the spokes. The torturer then took a hammer and smashed different parts of the limbs. Once the victim had died, the wheel was raised onto a shaft for the public to see. The victim could also be tied to the outside of the wheel with their feet secured to the ground.
The wheel would be turned until the victim’s body broke in two.
In rat torture, the victim was bound to a table or rack with a rat placed onto their chest. A bucket was placed over the rat, and a fire was lit on the top of the bucket. The rat tried to escape but couldn’t burrow through the steel bucket, so would burrow into the victim's body instead.
We shake our heads in disbelief when we visit such exhibits. We have become so much more civilised!
I predict that at some point in the future we will equally shake our heads over the current
law enforcement and court practices of the Northern Territory. The exhibition will show the causing of severe disadvantage by an uncaring and greedy coloniser and then, when the damage is optimal, the trialling of the victims by judges in costumes that impersonate the coloniser, and the punishment of the victims through isolation, deprivation of basic needs such as daylight, clothing and toilet paper, and humiliation until the victims try to kill themselves.
Three iconic cases
The widely-publicised Dylan Voller case illustrates how a problem develops into revolving-door justice and counterproductive prisons that are absurd, traumatising, vicariously traumatising, and absurdly expensive.
The Zak Grieve case illustrates how the combination of mandatory sentencing and the laws of complicity put young and vulnerable offenders and the public at risk.
The still-unfolding Zak Rolfe case, and the Dylan Voller case, illustrate how trauma in offenders, victims, and law enforcement causes volatile situations that put the whole
community at risk. The Dylan Voller case and the case of Mick (see Literature Review) show that most prisoners want “a normal life” and would, therefore, benefit from the normality principle.
The problems that we must overcome
The literature review revealed thirty-one problems that must be addressed to begin solving the problem of youth crime in Alice Springs. The problems can be divided into three broad groups:
- How we think about crime;
- Problems within the law; and
- Trauma-related problems.
How we think about crime
1. Opinions that are not based on science: emotions, feelings, and folklore
2. Perceptions of ‘them’; the sense that the problem is someone else’s but our own
3. The hunger for revenge and punishment
4. Strong beliefs in a “solid self ” with free will, despite the scientific evidence against it
5. A belief in quick fixes implemented by people who do not understand the problem
6. Signalling: Naming & shaming on social media – prison architecture
Problems within the law
7. Awe of the concept of mens rea in criminal law
8. The division between criminal law and civil law
9. The age of criminal responsibility
10. The laws of complicity
11. Silence and gratuitous concurrence in legal proceedings
12. Mandatory sentencing
13. The impact of irrelevant factors on judicial decisions
14. Revolving-door justice
15. All-white juries
16. The closure of Bush Courts
17. The steady defunding of community-based mediation services
18. The lack of diversion out bush
Trauma-related problems
19. Offenders’ intergenerational trauma
20. The adverse childhood experiences of offenders
21. The current life traumas of offenders
22. Trauma and vicarious trauma in the Alice Springs community
23. Traumas that the law and law enforcement cause to offenders and workers
24. Victim trauma
25. Organisations that do not sufficiently reach youth on the street
26. Siloing of NGOs and other agencies
27. (Vicarious) trauma in lawyers, judges, police officers and prison workers
28. Offenders’ disabilities
29. The waxing and waning of political approaches to the problem
30. Tokenism, identity politics and the infantilisation of Aboriginal people
31. Housing and homelessness
Image: medivalist.net
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