Members are notified that the Association’s 2020 Annual General Meeting will be at 5:30 pm on Friday 13 November 2020, at Murray Chambers, 3 Whitfield Street, Darwin.

I Can’t Believe it’s Not Bali: 

Lockdowns and Lockups

CLANT is excited to announce that our 18th Biennial Bali Conference is going ahead… in Darwin, at a venue and on a date to be fixed, in mid-2021.  We are now calling for papers, and particularly those that address our conference theme:

The 2021 CLANT conference coincides with both a global pandemic that has seen an immediate reimagining around the practice and procedures of criminal law both home and abroad; and  importantly it also coincides with the 30^th Anniversary of the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. It took about 30 days for the pandemic to create real change in the processes surrounding the manner we practice criminal law, yet in 30 years we have seen little change or any meaningful improvement in access to justice for First Nations people. This conference looks to focus on what we can do to improve the criminal justice system, starting by looking in our own backyard.

If you have a paper in mind, please let us know.

Copyright Chips Mackinolty 2020

A BIT ABOUT CLANT

The Criminal Lawyers Association of the Northern Territory (CLANT) has some 150 members in the NT. Through our biennial conference – “the Bali Conference” – we have welcomed many hundreds more criminal lawyers from every jurisdiction in Australia to join us.  One of the key features of this website is CLANT’s archive of papers, presentations and play-readings given at our biennial conferences over the years.

For over 30 years, CLANT has been an effective and powerful voice for the improvement of the criminal justice system in the Northern Territory, representing both defence lawyers and prosecutors, practitioners from the public sector, the private profession and the independent bar.

In a jurisdiction where offending rates, incarceration rates and recidivism rates are higher, and growing faster, than anywhere else in Australia, there are enormous challenges for the criminal justice system.

The Criminal Lawyers Association of the Northern Territory is strongly committed to addressing these problems. Among our Objects and Purposes are:

• to promote and advance the administration of the criminal justice system and development and improvement of criminal law throughout the Northern Territory
•  to actively contribute in public debates in issues relating to the criminal justice system
• to promote and encourage the protection of human rights and compliance with international human rights principles in the Northern Territory
• to promote the professional discourse, development and social interaction amongst the profession

In pursuit of these Objects, CLANT is proud to promote and support a range of campaigns, programs and causes.

JOIN US!

Membership is open to any person who either contributes to the field of criminal law or criminal jurisprudence, or who practices criminal law, in the Northern Territory of Australia.  Law students are eligible to be Associate Members. If you wish to become a member of CLANT and are eligible for membership, write to the CLANT Treasurer, and pay the biennial membership fee, which is currently $20.  In addition, all persons who are eligible for membership and attend the biennial CLANT conference, thereby become members.

WANT TO GET INVOLVED?

If you are interested in joining the CLANT Committee, please let us know.