T2C

Preventing Economic Barriers to Court Attendance

In 2013, QCOSS released a review of public transport fares in South East Queensland.  In this report, the writers provide the case study of Steve who experiences homelessness and is involved in the criminal justice system.  

Steve has been experiencing secondary homelessness in an outer Brisbane suburb during the past two years.  Steve pays most of his youth allowance payment on board to family and friends. He travels to the inner city to visit government and non-government support services and informal supports.  
In the time that Steve has been known to this service, he has been fined many times and been directed to appear in court for Fare Evasion on a number of occasions. The effect of this is that Steve often chooses to “sleep rough” in the CBD when he can no longer afford the train fare to and from the suburbs. Steve’s connection with inner city services and support networks and his inability to afford regular tickets means that he continues to be criminalised and to place himself and risky circumstances.
(QCOSS 2013: 12) 

Steve’s story represents a reoccurring issue within Australia’s criminal justice system.  In particular, that vulnerable people often struggle to attend Court proceedings due to the cost of public transport. 

We hope to address economic barriers to Court attendance by providing vulnerable defendants with a GoCard to assist them with the cost of transport to and from the Courthouse. To this end we have been graciously given $5000 seed funding by UnitingCare Community to implement the project. By providing this type of assistance to vulnerable defendants, we hope to prevent poverty being the reason people re-offend by failing to appear at Court. We will partner with organisations already engaged with vulnerable persons facing criminal charges so that we can provide assistance with the cost of transport to and from the Court. We will also highlight the stories of the defendants involved in the project, particularly their experiences of economic barriers in the legal system.   

To demonstrate the scope of this issue we are obtaining data from the Brisbane Magistrates Court on the number of fail to appear charges the Court deals with each year. We will develop a costing of Court and police time to deal with fail to appear charges - the majority of which we suspect could be avoided given the right systemic mechanism to facilitate appearance at Court.    

As professionals engaged with vulnerable persons who have contact with the legal system we are concerned with criminalisation of poverty and hope to contribute to a growing body of evidence that supporting people to achieve positive outcomes is beneficial for everyone in our community.

-UPDATE-

Unfortunately, we have no more GoCards to offer at this time.

Amelia & Bryony