Practice Guide: Aboriginal Hearing Day

Transferring our Aboriginal Hearing Day model 

The Aboriginal Hearing Day aims to:

• decrease the number of warrants
• increase appearance rates
• increase confidence between the Koori community and the Court.

The need for an Aboriginal Hearing Day

In 2008 the Neighbourhood Justice Centre identified gaps in its successful delivery of accessible justice and services to the local Aboriginal community. The Centre was finding that:

• there were low attendance rates of Aboriginal clients to court.
• there was often no representation from the local Aboriginal legal service for clients, even when there were clients in custody.
• the local Koori community were not accessing the services available through the Centre.

As well as addressing these concerns the Centre also sought to build stronger links with the local Koori community, in line with its community engagement approach, in order to address the underlying causes of offending.

This publication covers how we expanded the Aboriginal Hearing Day to our fellow court.