MANDATORY SENTENCING IN AUSTRALIA

When a 15-year-old boy hung himself in his bedroom at the Don Dale Detention Centre near Darwin in February this year, it triggered a national and international debate on the jailing of children, usually Aboriginal, for petty property crimes under Australia's 'three strikes and in' mandatory sentencing laws. The boy had been jailed for 28 days for stealing pencils and stationery and breaking a window.

A week after the boy's death, a 21-year-old Aboriginal man was sentenced to a year in jail for stealing $23 worth of biscuits and cordial.

The laws, in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, result in the jailing of repeat offenders who commit burglary and theft. In Northern Territory, many of those jailed were under the age of 18, no matter how trivial the crime. If the offender was over 18, he or she could be jailed for their first minor offence.

Criticism from overseas and Australian human rights organisations as well as politicians, church leaders and Aboriginal leaders has failed to sway the Northern Territory government, which says the laws are the only way of fighting a crime wave caused mainly by disaffected and unemployed Aboriginal youths.

Critics say that mandatory sentencing has increased the already disproportionate number of Aborigines in jail. In the Northern Territory in 1996, before mandatory sentencing, 701 of the 869 people - 80.7 per cent - in jail were Aborigines. The indigenous population makes up 25 per cent of the territory's population.

Prominent Magistrates have also criticised mandatory sentencing. The removal of any discretion on the part of individual judges makes a mockery of the separation of Judicial and Legislative powers in Australia's model of democracy.

The federal government at first refused to "interfere" in what Prime Minister John Howard said was essentially a state issue. Eventually, as outrage over the jailing of juveniles increased in pitch and tempo, Mr Howard allocated $20 million to the Northern Territory to divert young offenders into non-custodial programs.

The Northern Terrority was to have implemented the changes by 1 September 2000. It failed to do so.

The laws remain intact.

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