Locked up without a trial

"They are presumed to be innocent and a lot of these offences are not offences where, if they were convicted, they would necessarily go to jail," comments Lorana Bartels, a professor of criminology at ANU, a feminist who mainly advocates on behalf of female and indigenous prisoners.

Her focus is ironic given that most of the recent astonishing increase in presumed innocent people being locked up is due to what we might call "feminist offences" - offences allegedly committed mainly by males which the women's lobby has worked hard to ensure are punished severely. That means, ideally, putting the alleged perpetrator behind bars.

This feminist campaign has been a great success with a record number of prisoners on remand. In NSW, the overall remand prisoner population has increased by 74% in last 10 years and is now 92% male.

Naturally our biased media plays down the fact that mainly men are being impacted. The Sydney Morning Herald falsely claims that the changes which resulted in this increase "disproportionately affect Indigenous Australians, the homeless and women."

Yet the crimes the feminists have targeted - sexual assault, domestic violence, intimidation/stalking and the like – make up 98 per cent of the increase in remand prisoners in the last 4 years, according to data provided to us by BOSCAR. Domestic violence and sexual assault account for 83% of the increase.

Of course, there are shocking cases of women on remand - like Maree Mavis Crabtree, the Queensland woman who was recently released after six years behind bars. Bail had been refused after she was accused of killing her son with a poisoned fruit smoothie.

But these cases are rare compared to the huge number of men finding themselves in this situation. For instance, we never hear about the men now routinely imprisoned without a trial after accusations of domestic violence. For every two men in prison who have been convicted of domestic violence, there are three who have been charged but not tried.

As we know, no actual evidence is required to make a domestic violence accusation and have a man charged. A mere allegation by an angry ex-spouse is often sufficient to have her partner given an apprehended violence order and then, by setting up a few breaches of that order, put into jail.

The same applies to sexual assault, as we have seen from five judges' comments in NSW which led to the audit of current rape cases. Two years ago, Iwrote about a man – I called him "Peter" - who achieved a substantial malicious prosecution payout from NSW police and prosecutors after he was arrested at the airport and taken straight to prison on the basis of his ex-wife's false rape allegation – an allegation eventually disproved when he produced video evidence of her very obviously enjoying shagging him. I've seen that amazing video and described her "sitting on top of him, bouncing cheerfully."

Peter spent a terrifying month in prison on remand, surrounded by frightening men: "You are permanently on edge." He was initially put into a cell where the toilet was full of vomit, overflowing onto the floor. Even when moved to better accommodation he learnt to stand in the filthy shower on the plastic plate used for his meals. Hideous food, sadistic guards. He lost 15 kilos in the month he was imprisoned.

Another lawyer explains how the humiliations for these men pile up: "For low level offences, the police should issue notices to attend court but instead they are arresting men wherever they can find them, i.e. at home or at work. Handcuffing them and transporting them to police stations where they can then be questioned for many hours before charging them. This is all done in the traumatic cell environment where they will be ultimately searched and fingerprinted and formally charged."