Courtroom Culture Bias
Language barriers and lack of cross-cultural awareness excluding Aborigines from justice in the courts.
Courtroom language is culturally biased and aggressively colonial, alienating Indigenous defendants from mainstream justice and law.
Ignorance of cultural protocols involving questioning, body language and eye contact often place Aboriginal defendants at a disadvantage in the courts. Misunderstandings can also occur around the use of language (eg. questioning), with anglo assumptions regarding signs of guilt compounded by “gratuitous concurrence”.
Gratuitous concurrence is a fancy term for agreeing with government people when they fire long-winded and rapid questions at you, and you are confused by what is being said. Aboriginal people who speak English as a second language or dialect are particularly susceptible to this. As a result, many courtroom proceedings are culturally biased against Indigenous people. Here’s an example of some of the language used by the prosecutor in the Pinkenba case in Australia. The questions are transcribed in their original sequence.
“You knew that, Mr…, I’d suggest to you, please do not lie. You knew that you didn’t have to go anywhere if you didn’t want you, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Didn’t you Mr…?”
“Why did you just lie to me? Why did you just say ‘no’, Mr…? You want me to suggest a reason to you, Mr…? The reason was this, that you wanted this court to believe that you thought that you had to go with the police, isn’t that so?”
“Yes. Because you wanted the court to think that you didn’t know that you could tell these police you weren’t going anywhere with them. That was the reason, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”
“Look at me for a minute. Can you look at me? Can you look at me? You’re telling lies, aren’t you? Can you look at me and tell me that you aren’t telling me lies?”
“Why not? Is it because you think we’ll see lies written all over your face? Well? Well? Are you going to answer me? You see, you think this, don’t you, that you can do anything you like and you won’t get into much trouble? Isn’t that so? You answer me!”
