Life sentences for two of Cassius Turvey's killers
Life sentences for two of Cassius Turvey's killers
Published 27 June 2025, 9:42 am
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that the following story contains images and names of someone who has died. Two men have been sentenced to life in prison over the killing of Aboriginal schoolboy Cassius Turvey in Western Australia's Supreme Court. The judge said the 15-year-old boy was robbed of his life in a brutal act which can never be made right. Jack Brearley and Brodie Palmer will need to serve at least 22 and 18 years respectively before they are eligible for parole.
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Australia's prisoner numbers at all-time high and changing bail laws playing a part
The number of people in Australian prisons is at an all-time high and almost half of them have not been sentenced. That number has been steadily increasing for the past three years, with 40,330 people in custody in March 2022 and the figure now up to 46,081, according to new Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data. Unsentenced prisoners, also known as people on remand, increased by 8 per cent (1,345 people) to 19,119 in the last quarter, accounting for 42 per cent of people in prison. In the past few years, every state and territory has implemented, or is currently implementing, bail reform to make laws stricter, particularly for young offenders. Thalia Anthony, from the University of Technology Sydney faculty of law, said in many states bail laws had changed to have a presumption against bail for certain crimes. For example, in New South Wales, those charged with domestic violence offences must now "show cause" as to why they should not be detained. "It used to be just very, very serious offences [had a presumption against bail] and now the range of offences [has] become much more moderate," Dr Anthony said. She added a lack of community-based bail accommodation also led to more people being refused bail. "Instead, they are being imprisoned because that's where the resources of government are going," she said. "Not support in the community, but to ever-expanding prisons." University of Newcastle's head of law and justice, John Anderson, said the changes to bail laws were in part due to societal pressure. "Governments tend to also react to certain situations," he said. "So if you get certain high-profile cases where there's been serious crime and someone's been on bail, that certainly is amplified. "I think that does generate fear in the community if people are getting bail awaiting their trial, accused of a serious crime, and then particularly if they offend again while they're on bail or they don't comply with their bail conditions." However, he said that pressure had an unfair flow-on effect on people who were unlikely to their breach bail conditions and would benefit from being in the community. Law and justice professor Rick Sarre, from the University of Adelaide, said the new figures showed a "complete and utter abject failure of social and justice policy". "[It's] a massive, massive overspend which is driving more and more people to the wall in terms of justice policy and social policy and costing taxpayers billions of dollars for no reward," he said. He said another driver of imprisonment was increased maximum penalties. For example, in Queensland, the maximum penalty for possession of a knife in public has increased to 18 months imprisonment for a first offence and two years for a repeat offence, from 12 months for both. "So it's not a question of judges saying, 'Let's get tougher on crime,' because judges are now being given the parameters and those parameters have been increasing," Dr Sarre said. However, Dr Anderson noted that the type of offences most people were being imprisoned for were serious. In both Queensland and New South Wales, the largest number of prisoners have been sentenced for assaults or acts intended to cause injury. It coincides with the ABS national offending data. "So those sorts of offences being on the rise [does] mean that there'll be a more punitive response, so that results usually in increased incarceration," Dr Anderson said. The rate of imprisonment has increased to 214 people per 100,000 adults, with men making up 92 per cent of all prisoners. The imprisonment rate in the Northern Territory far exceeds the national average at 1,381.6 people per 100,000 adults. However, the Indigenous community has the highest imprisonment rate at 2,559 people per 100,000 Indigenous adults. The 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found Indigenous Australians made up 14.3 per cent of the prison population. At the time, that figure was labelled a crisis of over-representation. In the latest prison figures, that number has risen to 37 per cent. "When you've got law and order and systemic racism, these things are kind of a tinderbox for First Nations incarceration to explode," Dr Anthony said. "That's what's happening there. Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people are shouldering the burden of law and order." Despite the high number of prisoners, the offending rate is at its lowest since the ABS began recording data in 2008-09. However, Dr Anthony pointed out that more than half of the people leaving prison would reoffend, meaning imprisonment was unlikely to decrease offending. Dr Sarre also said high incarceration rates did not reduce crime and the opposite tended to be true. In Finland in 2023, there were 91.23 criminal offences reported per 1,000 people. Their current incarceration rate is 52 per 100,000. Similarly Japan, which has one of the lowest imprisonment rates in the world at 31 per 100,000 people, has a crime rate of 57 offences per 1,000 people. "Anyone who suggests that somehow the best way of bringing crime down is to raise the imprisonment rate is a complete idiot," Dr Sarre. "The United States, for example, has one of the highest imprisonment rates in the world. It also has one of the highest crime rates in the world." According to World Prison Brief data, Australia has the seventh-highest rate of imprisonment of the G20 nations. Dr Sarre said reducing the crime rate down came through "good, creative social policy". "[People are reoffending] … because we're simply not spending enough money on those people who are released by making sure their support networks for them," Dr Sarre said. He said a better way to better ways to reduce the crime rate was by ensuring young people had good support networks through education, housing, mental health safety nets and safety nets for dysfunctional families and intergenerational trauma. "That makes a far, far better report card than simply putting people behind bars," he said. "But you simply don't hear it from politicians. And that's disgraceful." Nationally, corrective services cost taxpayers $6.52 billion in 2023-24, according to the Productivity Commission. And if the rate of imprisonment remains the same, that number is expected to increase to $7 billion a year, a 2022 report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia says.
SBS Australia
an hour ago
- SBS Australia
Midday News Bulletin 29 June 2025
Listen to Australian and world news, and follow trending topics with SBS News Podcasts . TRANSCRIPT Home Affairs Minister says the listing of Terrorgram as a terrorist group aims to protect Australians Ukraine accuses Western nations of supplying Russian military with equipment Oscar Piastri to start the Austrian Grand Prix in third position Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says the formal listing of the violent online extremist group Terrorgram as a terrorist group is a necessary action to keep Australians safe. The federal government revealed the formal listing was partly motivated by an incident in June last year, involving an alleged plot to kill a New South Wales Labor M-P. The formal listing makes it an offence for anyone to be a member of, associate with, or support Terrorgram, with a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. Mr Burke told Sky News that constant effort is needed to counter the activities of terrorist groups online. "Look, I won't confirm more than the New South Wales attack on Tim Crakanthorp because we have given that one as part of formal reasons for the listings. But I can tell you Australians are much safer in a situation where the moment we know that somebody is part of this group, we can charge them." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Western countries, including the United States, Germany and France, of supplying Russia with military components and equipment. Speaking at a conference in Kyiv, he says experts in Ukraine have identified hundreds of different components contained in Russian drones and missiles. "Unfortunately, even Western countries continue to supply Russia with equipment and critical components. In the past year alone, deliveries of machine tools to Russia's military-industrial complex were recorded from at least 12 countries, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the United States." The EU Special Envoy for sanctions, David O'Sullivan, says actions have been taken to stop Russia accessing the latest weapons technology. "I think we have made it more difficult, more complicated and slower for Russia to obtain the kind of technologies that we are seeing here. We have not succeeded in stopping it totally and I'm sorry for that, because I know the suffering of the Ukrainian people. But I believe we have actually been quite successful in pressuring Russia; and we need to maintain that pressure while at the same time holding out the prospect that if Russia behaves correctly, we could have some kind of ceasefire and some kind of sensible negotiation. But for the moment, Russia doesn't seem to want that." The world's leading economies have agreed to a deal sparing the US's largest companies from paying more corporate tax overseas. In a statement, the Group of Seven says there's been agreement to exempt American companies from much of a 2021 deal imposing a 15 per cent global minimum corporate tax. The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves says in exchange, they have secured the removal of Section 899 from Donald Trump's major tax bill, which would have imposed additional tax on businesses. She says the removal of the section provides a better environment for G7 nations to take the next steps in tackling aggressive tax planning and avoidance. In Formula One, Oscar Piastri will start the Austrian Grand Prix from third place, while his teammate Lando Norris will be in pole position. Piastri was unable to go for a final flying lap at the end of qualifying, after being forced to slow down due to yellow flags prompted by the actions of Frenchman Pierre Gasly who spun on the track, bouncing through the gravel and onto the grass. The Australian says it was frustrating. "I mean I am pretty disappointed - but on in myself. I didn't get to do my last lap of Q3 because of the yellow flags. So, you know I think pole was going to be a tough battle to win. But the front row was definitely for the taking. It's a shame to have that kind of bring it all undone a bit - but it still could have been worse. So, I will try make sone progress tomorrow."
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Search and rescue divers recover man's body from the Yarra River
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