Commissioner of Police v John Goodall (a pseudonym)
[2022] QChCM 5
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- Commissioner of Police v John Goodall (a pseudonym)[2022] QChCM 5
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Commissioner of Police v John Goodall (a pseudonym)[2022] QChCM 5
Commissioner of Police v John Goodall (a pseudonym)[2022] QChCM 5
MAGISTRATES COURT OF QUEENSLAND
CITATION: | Commissioner of Police v John Goodall (a pseudonym) [2022] QChCM 5 |
PARTIES: | COMMISSIONER OF POLICE v JOHN GOODALL |
FILE NO: | Mount Isa CCM 496/22 |
PROCEEDING: | Sentence – Youth Justice Act |
COURT: | Children’s Court, Mount Isa |
DELIVERED ON: | 9 December 2022 |
DELIVERED AT: | Mount Isa |
HERAING DATE: | 6 December 2022 |
MAGISTRATE: | E. Mac Giolla Rí |
ORDER: | Restorative Justice Order, s 192A Youth Justice Act 1992 |
APPEARANCES: | Ms Hui, Police Prosecutions Corps. Ms Hine, Legal Aid Queensland Ms Irwin, Youth Justice Ms Allan, Child Safety. |
- [1]John Goodall is a 16 year-old aboriginal boy who has exponentially been exposed to youth detention conditions since he was 11 years of age and has spent a large proportion of his adolescence in custody.
- [2]On 2 December 2022 I sentenced John to a Restorative Justice Order under s 192A of the Youth Justice Act 1992 for the offence of unlawful assault by throwing bodily fluid at a public officer who was preforming a function of his office (‘Serious Assault’). At that time, I gave a brief explanation of the order to John but reserved my reasons, which I give now.
- [3]John pleaded guilty to the offence on 15 November 2022 and a pre-sentence report was ordered.
- [4]The offence occurred on 17 August 2022. At the time of the offence John was a prisoner at the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, Townsville. The complainant was an employee of the Centre.
Fact of the Offence
- [5]At around 4.45pm on 17 August 2022 John was sleeping in his cell. The complainant officer began to continuously flick the light in John’s cell on and off in order to wake John. It is not clear from the material why John could not sleep at that time. John became agitated by the continuous flicking. In response, John placed his mattress against the glass in his cell door in order to block the officer’s view of him. It appears that John was aware from prior experience that by doing so officers within the centre would be compelled to respond because of the risk that blocking the glass might be a precursor to self-harm or damaging his cell. John expected a conversation through the door with the officer, inferentially to get the officer to stop flicking the lights. John advised the officer that he had a cup of urine and that if the officer entered the cell John would pour the urine on him. John expected the officer to attempt to de-escalate the situation but the officer entered the cell. John poured the urine on him.
Pre-sentence Report (‘PSR’)
- [6]The insightful PSR, prepared by a Youth Justice case worker (‘the case worker’), provides some insight into John’s conduct.
- [7]The case worker’s notes the following:
- John had a profoundly prejudicial upbringing during which he experienced, among other things:
- Malnutrition;
- Physical abuse;
- Exposure to severe violence by his father towards his mother;
- Exposure to serious substance abuse by his parents;
- Involvement with Child Safety from the age of four; and
- Unstable Child Safety placements in foster care and residential homes between the ages of seven and nine;
- His prejudicial upbringing inhibited his physiological and psychological development, including John’s ability to:
- Emotionally regulate;
- Understand situations from the perspective of another person;
- Trust authority figures;
- Understand that bad decisions can lead to bad consequences and conversely, that good decisions can lead to good consequences; and
- Understand and resolve conflict appropriately.
- John has experienced imprisonment since he was 11 years of age and has been imprisoned for a large proportion of his adolescence.
- The length of his imprisonment has led to an over-familiarisation and desensitisation to prison;
- John has a deeply ingrained sense that he is treated differently (worse) than other prisoners;
- John believes that some staff target him to elicit behavioural reactions from him.
- [8]The case worker’s view is that John’s cognitive distortions of officers’ perceptions of him limited the way John could respond to the complainant officer. It is also quite likely that John’s history of assaults on detention staff means that detention staff do, in fact, treat him differently.
- [9]The events on 17 August 2022 replicate other offences John committed while imprisoned, including a direct replication of his motives, perceptions and cognitive distortions from earlier offences.
- [10]Ultimately, the case worker’s view is that the offence is an example of John “engaging in anti-social behaviour in an attempt to problem solve and communicate his frustrations through behaviour” and that the events showcase John’s “advanced capacity to problem solve…in an anti-social manner”.[1]
Earlier similar offending
- [11]In relation to the case worker’s finding that this offence involves an exact replication of earlier offending, I note that John has a barely credible record of offending against authority figures while being detained:
Date | Offence | Age |
11 Nov 2016 | Assault or Obstruct Police | 10 |
13 Nov 2016 | Assault or Obstruct Police (x 2) | 10 |
Date | Offence | Age |
26 Nov 2016 | Assault or Obstruct Police (x 2) | 10 |
26 Nov 2016 | Serious Assault on public officer in performance of duty | 10 |
17 Jul 2017 | Assault or Obstruct Police (x 3) | 11 |
17 Jul 2017 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting (x 4) | 11 |
15 Feb 2018 | Assault or Obstruct Police | 11 |
30 Mar 2018 | Assault or Obstruct Police | 11 |
5 Sept 2018 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting | 12 |
10 Sept 2018 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting (x 2) | 12 |
19 Dec 2018 | Obstruct Police | 12 |
24 Jan 2019 | Serious Assault on correctional officer | 12 |
31 Jan 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting | 12 |
19 Jan 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting | 12 |
2 Feb 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting | 12 |
11 Feb 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting | 12 |
12 Feb 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting | 12 |
13 Mar 2019 | Assault Police Obstruct Police | 12 |
16 Apr 2019 | Obstruct Police | 13 |
17 Apr 2019 | Assault Police Assault Watch-house officer | 13 |
27 Apr 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting Obstruct Police | 13 |
28 Apr 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting (x2) | 13 |
19 Aug 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting | 13 |
10 Dec 2019 | Serious Assault on public officer by spitting or biting Assault Police | 13 |
31 Jan 2020 | Serious Assault on public officer bites/spits/throws bodily fluid | 13 |
14 Feb 2020 | Serious Assault on public officer bites/spits/throws bodily fluid | 13 |
27 Feb 2020 | Serious Assault on public officer bites/spits/throws bodily fluid | 13 |
20 Mar 2020 | Assault Police (x3) | 13 |
20 Sept 2020 | Assault Police | 14 |
9 May 2021 | Serious Assault on public officer by biting or spitting | 15 |
- [12]Curiously, John has rarely committed offences of violence against anyone other than police or officers involved in imprisoning him. John’s relative lack of convictions for ‘other violence’ suggests that the litany of offences above is not a result of predisposition to violence, but rather that John was reacting to events in the same way he reacted in this offence in August 2022.
- [13]John’s total convictions for violence outside of a police/detention setting is as follows:
Date | Offence | Age |
7 Dec 2017 | Common assault (x 3) | 11 |
10 Sept 2018 | Common Assault[2] | 12 |
15 June 2021 | Common Assault | 15 |
- [14]The extreme difference between violence in a police/detention setting and in his ‘normal’ life is so stark that it suggests to me that the case worker’s opinions must be correct, i.e. that there are very specific reasons for this offence and those reasons are deeply rooted in the abuse John suffered in his formative years:
Interventions to deal with violence towards authority figures
- [15]Considering the above, I find that John does not have a general inclination to be violent but has pronounced violent tendencies in the limited circumstances of dealing with police and officers involved in his imprisonment.
- [16]John has been offending in this way since he was 10 years of age. It seems highly likely that John has been committing these offences since he was 10 years old because of the same underlying early-life trauma and thought processes.
- [17]I am advised by Youth Justice that in 2019, while John was housed in the Behaviour Support Unit[3] at a detention centre, he had some access to an anger management program. Since that time no interventions have been made available to John in relation to his violent offending against police or those involved in his imprisonment.
- [18]Youth Justice further advise that Aggression Replacement Training (‘ART’) is sometimes offered in detention, but is a group-based intervention and may not have been offered recently due to Covid-19 restrictions. It seems unlikely to me that this is a valid reason for the failure of Youth Justice to attempt anger management interventions with John for the last three years because:
- John’s difficulties in this area are so serious that it is unlikely that an off the shelf program involving other children would be appropriate; and
- The Covid/Omicron crisis that gripped Youth Detention Centres late last year and earlier this year[4] has been resolved for at least 6 months, in which time no anger management programs have been offered to John.
- [19]Child Safety has been involved in John’s life since he was four years of age. Although John has been placed with his mother since shortly after his 10th birthday, Child Safety has retained legal guardianship over John. Despite this, the Court Liaison Officer for Child Safety was unable to identify any anger management or other relevant interventions Child Safety has put in place for John.
- [20]As such, neither of the state agencies responsible for John’s well-being has offered John any meaningful interventions to deal with his anger management issues for the last three years. This absence of assistance occurred despite John being continuously either in a detention centre or on youth justice orders since 2019, i.e. there were ample opportunities for intervention had the government agencies in his life chosen to assist him – he was quite literally a captive audience for much of that time.
- [21]I note Youth Justice Principle 9(b) & (d) that a child who commits a crime should be dealt with in a way that gives the child the opportunity to develop in responsible, beneficial and socially acceptable ways and that recognises a child’s need for guidance and assistance.
- [22]I further note Youth Justice Principle 21(f) that a child in detention should be given access to therapeutic services that meet the child’s needs.
- [23]It seems to me that, to date, John has not been given the assistance that he needs and, under the YJ principles, the community is entitled to expect. John and the community are reaping the consequences of our collective failure to assist him appropriately.
Other relevant matters
- [24]John has a long and serious history of committing property offences. On 20 September 2022 (i.e. since this Serious Assault offence was committed) John was sentenced to 4 months detention in relation to stealing cars (x 2), attempted entry of a home and break and enter premises. Given the matters set out above, I doubt whether that sentence would have been substantially higher) if he had also been sentenced for this Serious Assault offence on 20 September 2022.[5] The ‘totality’ principle requires that I should take the sentence on 20 September 2022 into account.
Restorative Justice Order
- [25]Under section 162 of the Youth Justice Act 1992, I must consider referring John to a restorative justice process. A restorative justice process would ensure John is held accountable for his actions in a safe and supportive environment. It would attempt to raise awareness of the range of emotions faced and consequences experienced by the victims. It would also afford John the opportunity to accept responsibility for his actions and make amends for his offending. This process can be facilitated through either a diversionary referral or a sentenced restorative justice order. At the time of the interview with the case worker, John was willing to engage in a restorative justice process and Youth Justice saw an RJO as appropriate. The possibility and procedure of engaging in a restorative justice process was discussed at length and John made enquiries as to what would be involved. John has a firm understanding that the process would involve engaging in open conversation with the custodial officer involved.
Decision
- [26]In summary, the reasons an RJO in this matter are as follows:
- The plea of guilty;
- The Youth Justice principles;
- There is an absence of evidence as to officer’s need to wake John up at the particular time of the offence;
- Whether or not the flicking of the light switch was designed to elicit a behavioural reaction from John, it clearly had that effect;
- In the context of John’s early childhood trauma, his lack of trust of authority figures is understandable, as is the fact that the officer’s conduct elicited strong emotions in John;
- John has a lamentable history of assaults on police/detention staff but, by and large, is not aggressive towards others;
- John has been committing these offences against police/detention staff since he was 10 years old;
- The reasons for these offences are, in all likelihood, the same now as they were when John was 10 years old;
- Over at least the last three years, neither Youth Justice nor Child Safety has provided appropriate interventions to address John’s aggression towards police/detention staff;
- A RJO has some, albeit limited, prospect in assisting John to understand the officer’s perspective and suffering and to assist in John’s rehabilitation and is more likely to reduce John’s risk of reoffending than any other order; and
- Totality
Footnotes
[1] PSR at page 4.
[2] Its not entirely clear that this did not involve police or correctional staff because it occurred on the same day as two other offences of Serious Assault on a Public Officer but I have included it in the list for completeness. I don’t have the facts for earlier offences.
[3] A unit within a detention centre for prisoners with the most significant behavioural issues.
[4] See Jimmy Mansfield (a pseudonym) v Commissioner of Police [2022] QChCM 1 at [30] and Commissioner of Police v Leo Horan (a pseudonym) [2022] QChCM 2 at [12]-[15]
[5] Johnson v The Queen [2004] HCA 15 at [18]