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