James Glissan

They're not yet victims until it's proven.

But I've also seen how it affects people who are arrested and who are charged with things.

And it's never, ever black and white.

It's never clean cut.

And then that compounded when I went to prosecuting.

Because as a prosecutor, you represent, yes, the state and the police, but you're also there to get the evidence from the complainants.

Sometimes they really don't want to come because they don't want to relive whatever happened to them.

And that has its own challenges.

But you also see people who are self-represented for, in comparison, very minor things like traffic offenses.

And they believe very strongly in their position, but they don't really know how to articulate it because there isn't a huge amount of education in this country at any level unless you go through a law degree at university to understand how it works and how court works.

And it's very brave to do that.

And I have a lot of respect for people who do self-represent.

And then, of course, coming to the defense side of things, you see it again and a different side of it once more of how it's affecting them personally while they're waiting for a hearing or a trial date, what the risks are.

How somebody who has lived a fantastic life and been a very valuable member of the community for a long time can either make one mistake or a relapse in judgment, and then their entire life can change forever with a criminal record.

Yeah, so it's very much driven by policy.

I mean, at the beginning of the Crimes Act, whether that's the Domestic Violence one or the General State Act, it sets out the objectives and they're the guiding policy aspects, right?

So when you're talking about offences that end up in the lower court, so the local court, and that's a lot of offences, it can even be quite serious because we've moved a lot of really serious offences down a level so that they can be dealt there.

quickly.

That decision is dealt with by really the particular PAC or the particular police station in charge of it.

And they inform themselves by way of policy.