Police v Tracey [2022] ACTMC 26

• 50 year old Indigenous offender sentenced for assault offences committed while in lawful custody – separation from mother, family, culture and Country through adoption at 6 weeks of age led to lifetime of isolation, institutionalisation and deep depression: at [6]
• Reference to the Significance of Culture to Wellbeing, Healing and Rehabilitation Report commissioned by the Bugmy Bar Book Committee and R v BS-X [81]-[82] – importance of offender’s growing connection to family and culture for long-term healing and rehabilitation: at [6]
• Accepted significant impact of abuse suffered while offender detained in two notorious institutions as a child and young person:

[54] Your experiences as a child and young person within these state run institutions caused you enormous and ongoing harm. They were institutions of fear, not safety; of isolation, not connection. Your criminal history demonstrates that your experiences in these institutions did not support you to live a healthy life in the community. Indeed, there is little doubt that the harm done to you in these institutions is inextricably linked to your offending and ongoing incarceration.

[55] As is recognised by the Australian Law Reform Commission in its Pathways to Justice – An Inquiry into the Incarceration Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Final Report (2017) ‘child removal into out-of-home care and juvenile detention could be considered as key drivers of adult incarceration’ (p 485). See also, Bugmy Bar Book, Out of Home Care (September 2021) pp 10-12; Bugmy Bar Book, Impacts of Imprisonment and Remand in Custody (November 2022).

• Impact of childhood trauma moderated moral culpability and established special circumstances permitting sentence to be imposed concurrent to existing sentence with period of parole – importance of supervision in community after release from custody: at [19]-[21]; [84]