QLD Are Police Arrest Logs Public Information?

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Anics

Member
7 November 2018
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0
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Hello,

I'm interested in knowing if police arrest logs at a (any) police station in Australia or more specifically Queensland are public information and if any citizen is able to simply ask their local police station for the log book to view it?

To be more specific in what I'm asking, I'm from California and the government code 6254 which can be found here.

Says this:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this subdivision, state and local law enforcement agencies shall make public the following information, except to the extent that disclosure of a particular item of information would endanger the safety of a person involved in an investigation or would endanger the successful completion of the investigation or a related investigation:

(1) The full name and occupation of every individual arrested by the agency, the individual’s physical description including date of birth, color of eyes and hair, sex, height and weight, the time and date of arrest, the time and date of booking, the location of the arrest, the factual circumstances surrounding the arrest, the amount of bail set, the time and manner of release or the location where the individual is currently being held, and all charges the individual is being held upon, including any outstanding warrants from other jurisdictions and parole or probation holds.
Does Australia have any similar law regarding public access to information of this type or are there privacy laws that prevent this? If so, which specific laws allow this or prevent this?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Kind regards.
 

Scruff

Well-Known Member
25 July 2018
902
133
2,389
NSW
All Police services in Australia are government agencies and are therefore subject to various legislation regarding the release of personal information. In short, government departments and agencies are prohibited from releasing information from which a person's identity can be determined unless there is an overwhelming public interest to do so.

So to answer your question - no, Australia does not have public registers or logs where simply anyone can walk in and look up arrest details, and rightfully so. Remember that an arrest is only an accusation, not a conviction.

The closest you could get (for an individual) would a criminal history check, which is a paid service (around $50 per query I think). And even that I think would only show convictions, not arrests.

For Queensland, the relative legislation would be the Information Privacy Act 2009.
See section 11 of Schedule 3 (Information privacy principles).
 
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