It's something we rarely hear about in Australia – for good reason – but there are people living in witness protection programs across the nation.
It's something we rarely hear about in Australia – for good reason – but there's likely to be dozens of people living in witness protection programs across the nation.
For most of us, everything we know about the secretive world of witness protection has come from watching Hollywood films like Sister Act and the new ABC dark comedyStella is told by Airini that if she wants to live, she and her children must change their names and move interstate. In the most recent episode, it was revealed almost all of the other residents living in the small town are also in witness protection – it turns out the federal government decided to dump them all there as part of a long-forgotten program started in the 1980s. Most of them are criminals and some are still breaking the law.So, how much of that would happen in real life? We asked Dr Phil Kowalick, a former director of the National Witness Protection Program.
But he said entering a witness protection program was a longer process. They would need to go through rigorous interviews to see whether she was suitable to be included in witness protection – and whether she wanted to be included – before any re-identification and relocation took place. "They knew that one of the well-known hit men had boarded a plane and was heading to the state that she lived in."Re-identification and relocation were the "two major planks to witness protection", Dr Kowalick said.
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