Port Arthur, Robo-debt and the Post Office

 

 

This is a study in abuse of corporate power and why innocent people give in to incorrect charges. It's far more common than you might think.

I'm listening to a podcast called The Westminster Tradition, covering these two cases:

Robodebt was a program run by the Australian government to 'catch welfare cheats'. It used illegal and illogical computer programs to accuse thousands of people of welfare fraud, putting the onus on the recipient to prove their innocence, rather than the other way around. Unknown thousands of people received these claims and paid them, unable to challenge the government system. It took over 5 years for the unjustly accused to get the system stopped.

Mr Bates v The Post Office

is another, similar scandal from the UK where the Post Office knowingly implemented a faulty computer system, then lied to and charged their sub postmasters with fraud and theft. Many paid their fines or convictions, many spent years in jail, some committee suicide. 

One key issue is that the government often gave them a plea bargain. "We've charged you with both fraud and theft. But if you please guilty to theft, we will drop the fraud charge, and you might get off with a warning for the theft charge." Many of these innocent people accepted this devil's bargain, even though they were completely innocent and it was the Horizon computer system at fault.

What is a plea bargain? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain

A plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or nolo contendere. This may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to a less serious charge, or to one of the several charges, in return for the dismissal of other charges; or it may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to the original criminal charge in return for a more lenient sentence.^[1]

A plea bargain allows both parties to avoid a lengthy criminal trial and may allow criminal defendants to avoid the risk of conviction at trial on a more serious charge. For example, in the legal system of the United States, a criminal defendant charged with a felony theft charge, the conviction of which would require imprisonment in state prison, may be offered the opportunity to plead guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge, which may not carry a custodial sentence.

In cases such as an automobile collision when there is a potential for civil liability against the defendant, the defendant may agree to plead "no contest" or "guilty with a civil reservation", which essentially is a guilty plea without admitting civil liability.

Plea bargaining can present a dilemma to defense attorneys, in that they must choose between vigorously seeking a good deal for their present client, or maintaining a good relationship with the prosecutor for the sake of helping future clients.^[2] However, in the case of the US for example, defense attorneys are required by the ethics of the bar to defend the present client's interests over the interests of others. Violation of this rule may result in disciplinary sanctions being imposed against the defense attorney by the appropriate state's bar association.^[3]

In charge bargaining, defendants plead guilty to a less serious crime than the original charge that was filed against them. In count bargaining, they plead guilty to a subset of multiple original charges. In sentence bargaining, they plead guilty agreeing in advance what sentence will be given; however, this sentence can still be denied by the judge. In fact bargaining, defendants plead guilty but the prosecutor agrees to stipulate (i.e., to affirm or concede) certain facts that will affect how the defendant is punished under the sentencing guidelines.

Plea bargaining was considered a predominantly American phenomenon during the 1970s, but has since spread throughout the world.^[4]

But in the human realm: Why?
Why plead guilty? What's going on in the defendant's mind?

Often, it's a desire for the ordeal to be over. You may have heard 'the process is the punishment', and being subject to the legal process, having police interviews, your home searched, the neighbor's gossip - many people just want to put it behind them and move on, even if they lose a lot in the process. The lawyers and government know this, and so the process is designed to squeeze the victim into complying.

In both of these cases, pompous government employees just assumed that the system was correct, and was catching so many people because they were all criminals. They privately believed that most people of lower class were inherently corrupt, and thus secretly pleased that so many were being caught. "Yes, good. It serves them right."

Here's the transcript of a part of the discussion:

• It's about a lack of compassion or care, about the impact of your institution on others. These institutions had to look at other people suffering...and not care, actively paint them as deserving of the suffering they were undergoing...and not care.
• There's something interesting, in the Robodebt case, there's the idea of the "welfare bludger" narrative, in Horizon there's actually a real class thing...right? Post Office masters are shopkeepers...like in Jane Austen...cheapside...(lower class...working class...). The inquiry revealed that head office viewed their franchise sub postmasters with contempt.
• And so...that is like the foundation of the issue...that acceptance by both the UK and Australian governments that people of lower status are basically fraudulent....all criminals in waiting...
• I just can't believe that at no point did it strike them as true...that this high proportion of their own postmasters would be thieving...at quite a large scale...and nobody went, like "Is there an epidemic of theft or could there be some other problem?" 
• Equally, that this many people were misleading Centrelink about how much money they were owed...at some point you have to look at the scale, the proportions involved and go..."something doesn't seem right here".
• There's also just an institutional attitude component that makes me wonder...if you think that high a proportion of people are comfortable with that high a level of stealing...does that not...who do you hang around with?... It goes to how they are characterising those people... they don't hang around with those people...right? So it's easy to characterise those people as...yes... "Nobody I know would steal...but...the filthy underclass? You're so right.

The Port Arthur Massacre has a very similar set of emotions involved. 
Martin was Tasmanian, a place widely viewed by mainlanders as backward, inbred and unsophisticated. Further, he was mentally ill and a social outsider. So when the media ran salacious and illegal photos and stories painting him as a deranged gunman, our deeply buried prejudices quite naturally responded, "It's so understandable that someone like that would do something like that, I'm so glad I'm not like that."

Martin's initial plea was 'not guilty' and he then spent 5 months in solitary confinement, consistently asserting his innocence and that there was no evidence that put him at the scene. It was only when his first defense lawyer, David Gunson was replaced by John Avery, that he was convinced to change his plea. Avery told Martin that his burns were healed, and he was taking up a bed in the prison hospital which should rightly be used by other sick prisoners. Martin would be moved into General Population, along with other murderers, drug dealers and rapists, including Mark 'Chopper' Read. Chopper was an expert at slicing off the fingers and toes of his victims, and both Bryant and Avery knew this.

They also knew that once the prisoners began beating Martin to death, it would take a long time for him to die, and the guards wouldn't stop it. The guards had already tortured Martin by twisting his burned arms behind his back, so Martin knew he could expect no sympathy from them.

After letting Martin imagine his own death for a few moments, Avery then offered him a lifeline. He could stay in the prison hospital for the rest of his life, under the supervision of his doctors, but only if the plea was changed to guilty. This is called a 'Plea Bargain' and happens very frequently in the court system. Quite often, criminals arrested with drugs and guns will be convinced to plead guilty to the drug charges, the firearms charges are dropped, the case proceeds faster and the statistics look good because 'there's less gun crime now.' No, there's just less gun crime prosecuted - very different things.

Faced with his own death, Martin took the awful decision to accept the plea bargain. Thousands of Centrelink 'customers' and Sub-Postmasters accepted similar bargains while faced with far less hideous options, so it's easy to see why Martin changed his plea, once we know more of the facts.

The real problem lies with us, who are so easy to accept the bad news about someone, and judge them harshly, without knowing much about the issue.

Martin deserves a re-trial.
The victims and their families deserve the truth.
Martin and all the victims of Robodebt and the Post Office deserve justice.