Statement on Mandatory Sentencing
Dr William Jonas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, HREOC Press Conference, 17 February 2000.
For Australia's Indigenous communities and those associated with us, the death in custody of the young Aboriginal boy last week is nothing new. Lamentably, it is nothing new.
In the 1980s some 100 Indigenous lives were lost in similar circumstances. In the 1990s, a further 147 perished in prisons and detention centres around the country.
For at least twenty years now, authorities in Australia have had their attention drawn repeatedly to the fact that Indigenous people are vastly over-represented in the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems. The reasons are clear-cut and widely-accepted: Indigenous people continue to suffer economic disadvantage, social disruption and systemic discrimination.
Back in 1991 the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made a series of recommendations to state and federal governments:
- Imprisonment or detention must be a sanction of last resort.
- Diversionary programs - such as cautioning and family conferencing - must be introduced to keep offenders out of the formal court system.
- Non-custodial sentencing options - such as supervision orders, probation, financial compensation, and community service - must be introduced as an alternative to detention.
- Finally, laws and policies on sentencing must be developed in consultation with local communities.
All of these recommendations adhere to international human rights principles and promote the central principle of juvenile justice: to look after the 'best interests of the child'.
Mandatory sentencing clearly ignores these recommendations.
Unfortunately and inevitably the issue of mandatory sentencing will divide Australia. It comes as no surprise to me at all that supporters of this barbaric legislation have already resorted to recriminations against "bleeding-heart do-gooders from the south". It's a tired, pathetic and unwise response. Shooting the messenger never did deny the truth of the message.
Nor is the division of opinion in Australia as clear-cut as one might imagine. When the current Senate Committee inquiry into the mandatory sentencing of juvenile offenders was in Darwin recently gathering evidence, it received 17 separate submissions. Sixteen of the submissions were against mandatory sentencing. The only one in favour...was from the Northern Territory Government.
The trauma and massive cost of separating children from their families and communities was poignantly demonstrated in our "stolen generation" report three years ago. Mandatory detention is separation under a new guise. Its targeting of minor property offences discriminates conspicuously against poor Indigenous youth.
By way of comparison, mandatory sentencing does not apply to the crime of fraud, and 100% of fraud cases involving juveniles in the NT [and WA?] are by white children.
As long as this country continues to lock up Aboriginal children for trivial offences, you can be sure we will have blood on our hands.
I am angry and sad, for a 15 year old boy and for this nation.
Last updated 1 December 2001
