hearing loss and the criminal justice system - Australian Indigenous ...

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Senate Inquiry March 2010_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A special case was argued and the Australian Hearing Service audiologistwho examined him exercised some personal discretion to enable him tobe fitted and provided with a hearing aid. Soon after being fitted with ahearing aid, he successfully took on a supervisory position at hisworkplace.This case study highlights the fact that hearing loss may be a significant factor in problemsthat bring people into contact with the police and may also be one of the reasons why thatcontact can have poor outcomes. Poor outcomes were related to this man’s hearing relatedcommunication problems. Over time, these communication problems contributed to thedevelopment of a negative attitude towards police.There is also limited awareness among police officers of the prevalence of hearing lossamong Indigenous people and how that hearing loss results in limited communication skills.This lack of awareness, on the part of the police, also contributes to poor outcomes frominteractions between police officers and Indigenous individuals with hearing loss. Theintervention in this case study, included provision of an amplification device and some timespent with the police to raise awareness and provide a brief training session on crossculturalcommunications.I would not like to present ‘hearing aids alone’ as a fix all solution. The man in the abovecase study was in his forties and his lifetime of listening difficulties made him ready toaccept the use of an amplification device, and then a hearing aid. The acceptance of anykind of amplification is more difficult for younger people. Identifying their hearing loss andthen convincing Indigenous youths with hearing problems to accept the use of amplification,as a solution to some of the issues in their lives, is usually very difficult to achieve. A longtermstrategy needs to be developed and, even then, the implementation of such a strategywill take a lot of work. Communications training for police of the type that occurred withthis man is likely to be easier to achieve.The potential for ill‐informed police officers to escalate problems when dealing withIndigenous youth with hearing loss can be seen in an interview carried out with Steven T.People with hearing loss often have difficulty selecting the appropriate volume whenspeaking. Firstly, people with Conductive Hearing Loss may talk quietly and, they are oftenaccused of mumbling. This is caused by their difficulty in judging the right volume whenspeaking, in a given situation. For someone with Conductive Hearing Loss, their voice oftensounds louder to them than it actually is heard by others. This is the result of their voicebeing ‘conducted’ past their damaged middle ear through the bones in their skull. As aconsequence, they may speak in a way that sounds very quiet and indistinct to othersalthough, to the individual themself, it sounds fine._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________10 Phoenix Consulting
Senate Inquiry March 2010_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Steven, a man in his thirties, had a longstanding hearing loss. In spite of his hearing loss,Steven held a senior position in his employment and had almost finished a law degree.Here, Steven describes his experience with the police.“I’ve been pulled up by police when I was younger and I was sort of mumbled out aresponse and they say ‘Quit your mumbling, you know, blah, blah, blah’, start tomake fun of me, you know. And I’m still so offended, made me out to be some sortof – treated me like I was a second class citizen, or a dumb person. This is the wayhe, this particular policeman (responded) and that gave me a negative view of him Iguess. But then you do mumble sometimes, to you it doesn’t sound like that toyou.”Steven described how the police officers ‘offended’ him by the way they spoke to him abouthis ‘mumbling’. For many other Indigenous people with hearing loss such an encounter mayhave escalated into an argument and arrest.Alternatively, people with hearing loss may speak more loudly than is needed in order forothers to hear them. Their difficulty with hearing, especially in the presence of backgroundnoise, means that they need other people to speak loudly so that they can hear andunderstand what is being said. They often speak to others at this same high volume, butothers find it too loud. Their loud speech may be seen as being aggressive.For example, one young Indigenous man with hearing problems, with whom I worked wasperceived by a group of non‐Indigenous women as being aggressive when he used a loudspeaking voice to communicate with them in their noisy work environment. He was thenapproached by management about the aggression he was displaying towards his workmates. He vehemently denied that he had been aggressive and stated that he had simplybeen speaking normally. Since he knew he had not been intentionally aggressive he felt thattheir complaint was spurious and based on racist attitudes. He responded antagonisticallytoward them and soon afterwards he left the job.Communication problems associated with speaking too loudly may occasion complaint,which prompts involvement by the police. When the police enter the situation, theloudness of speech may be equated with aggression, and result in arrest. Alcoholcompounds the problem, partly by further reducing hearing acuity but also by lesseningpeople’s inhibitions, in which case they are more likely to express past or currentfrustrations. Frustrations that are often related to their hearing loss.The potential exists to, almost immediately, provide for better outcomes in the types ofsituations we have spoken of above. If training were to be put in place to enable policeofficers to be aware of the communication issues around hearing loss and give them theskills and knowledge base to manage these types of communication more effectively, Ibelieve there would be immediate positive results.When these cases are considered, and compared with the statistics relating to the use ofpolice discretion, it suggests that one important way to diminish the number of arrests ofIndigenous youths would be to train police officers about the communication issues around_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________11 Phoenix Consulting
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interpreter was driving N home, wit
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