00:00The researcher's lead author is Carly Schriever.
00:05She's a psychologist, a lawyer, and an empirical researcher.
00:10And for this study, she did 59 in-depth interviews with judges and magistrates around the country
00:16from five different jurisdictions.
00:18And what she found was that pretty much every one of them said workload was a massive issue
00:23for them.
00:25One magistrate described the workload as enormous and reported hearing between 60 and 70 cases
00:32a day, many of them family violence cases.
00:35And he said that this was absurd.
00:37You always want to feel that people who come to court have been heard and their cases have
00:41been dealt with fairly and justly, rather than being forced into a situation where you
00:47have to, quote, tick and flick.
00:49Now another magistrate described the work pressures as, quote, shoveling snow while
00:54it's still snowing.
00:56And another judge in a civil court said that he felt that he was on a treadmill.
01:01So that gives you a flavor of some of the comments in the study.
01:06One particularly interesting response was from a magistrate who pointed the finger at
01:10the law and order drive.
01:12And he said that as there was pressure to increase the number of police, that meant
01:17that there were more police doing police work, leading to more arrests and more people coming
01:22before the courts.
01:24Then that magistrate said, unlike police, there's no money and no votes in the courts.
01:31So there was extra workload on the courts from all this extra policing out in the community.
01:37One magistrate described a situation where she had 65 cases in a day just before Christmas
01:45and said, you just can't do it.
01:46You can't.
01:47Well, you can do it, but you do it so fast that there's contempt for the people's ability
01:52to comprehend what's happening to them.
01:55And she described that as being appalling.
01:58And are the concerns only about the volume of work, Damien?
02:02Well, no.
02:03One magistrate spoke about the inadequacy of the sentencing options and the inadequacy
02:08of funding for rehabilitation and corrections and said, quote, so you're seeing these people
02:15come in, go out, set your time watch, and they come back again.
02:20And really just highlighting the fact that jail's not the answer, but they're really
02:26aren't the tools for keeping people out of jail and rehabilitating them.
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