ABC TV 7:30 Report Transcript 26/07/1999 SA takes a different approach to Aboriginal custody KERRY O'BRIEN: Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders make up less than 2 per cent of the Australian population but they account for almost 20 per cent of prison inmates. It's now almost 10 years since the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody made over 300 recommendations designed to reduce this massive over-representation of Indigenous Australians in jail. A number of the royal commission's recommendations dealt with the court system and the belief by many Aboriginal defendants that it is loaded against them. In South Australia, a new approach is being taken at the Port Adelaide Magistrates Court. The Aboriginal community, police and the judiciary are working together to break down traditional barriers. In part, it involves a man who has spent half his life behind bars, sharing the bench with a magistrate who sent him to jail. Mike Sexton reports. MIKE SEXTON: Tony Lindsay knows all too well the problems facing Aboriginal men and women in jail. Although he's only 42, he's spent almost half his life behind bars. TONY LINDSAY, ABORIGINAL OFFENDERS SUPPORT SERVICE: Well, it's not easy for anybody in prison, let alone Aboriginals. When you're trying to adjust to one society and you don't yet know where your own society is, you become accustomed to prison, you become institutionalised, you depend on the system to do for you rather than you do for you. MIKE SEXTON: Tony's first jail experience was as an 11-year-old when he spent a night in the Port Adelaide police cells. His story is not unfamiliar in this blue collar area with high unemployment and a large indigenous population. 10 per cent of the cases heard at the Port Adelaide Magistrate's Court involve Aboriginal defendants. GARTH DODD, ABORIGINAL JUSTICE OFFICER: It's like it has been for a nu mber of years. They come in, they sit down or stand up, or whatever, and they can't open up, they can't talk, or don't want to talk. MIKE SEXTON: But now that's changing with a new court system designed for everyone to talk. CHRIS VASS, PORT ADELAIDE MAGISTRATE: Well, convince me why you're over heroin? MIKE SEXTON: This case is being heard in the Special Interest Court or the Nunga Court as it is known -- Nunga being a term for Aborigines in South Australia. The court is restructured with the defendant and his or her representatives and family members sitting directly across the bench from the magistrate, Chris Vass. CHRIS VASS: How old are your kids? ABORIGINAL MAN: 7 and 8. Nearly 8 and 9. CHRIS VASS: So what are you doing to them by doing this, by taking heroin and committing crimes, what are you doing to your kids? MIKE SEXTON: The court is only for those who have pleaded guilty, but by breaking down some European court traditions Magistrate Vass wants the community to be involved in the sentencing process. CHRIS VASS: We're brought up with it, we understand it but for these people, I think they want to be able to have their say. They want to be a bit more emotional about it, they want to tell their story and they want to have other members of the family tell their story and that's an opportunity for them to do that and I think it's proper for us to listen. GARTH DODD: It will help our clients, our people work through the court system, no matter what that may be, we try and help them out throughout their procedures or if they want to know any questions or anything of the sort, we'll just help them out in any way we can. MIKE SEXTON: In this case, the defendant has explained his heroin addiction and his grief at recently losing his parents. CHRIS VASS: Your wife's told me about the family, part of your family passed away because of drugs, is that right? ABORIGINAL MAN: Yes. CHRIS VASS: So, have you learned that lesson? ABORIGINAL MAN: Just shows how easy it can be. CHRIS VASS: I understand that. ABORIGINAL MAN: I feel I haven't got the right t o take my life or take myself away from the kids. CHRIS VASS: That's right. ABORIGINAL MAN: I mean, it would be different if it was my own decision, but whatever decision I make now is for my kids' sake as well. MIKE SEXTON: During the hearing, Tony Lindsay sits next to the magistrate who once sentenced him to a prison stretch. Now he advises him and talks to the defendant. CHRIS VASS: Do you know this man? TONY LINDSAY: Yeh, I know Joe. What support people are you going to use out there, Joe? ASG, ADAC , people like that? Support group. ACOSS? ABORIGINAL MAN: Yeah, because I feel like. TONY LINDSAY: Because it's easy to say, brother, but we need to make a move. Because my face is known around the system, the prison system and community, if guys see me sitting up there it probably makes them feel more comfortable to say things, to be more open about it, and I usually talk to them before court and after court and you know encourage them to have their say. MIKE SEXTON: In one particular case, the mother of a defendant was asked if she wanted to say something in court. CHRIS VASS: The mother said yes but she didn't speak to me, she spoke to her son, and addressed him quite firmly about where he'd gone wrong and what his family expected of him. She was in tears but she spoke very strongly and it was clear that she'd had a marked effect upon him and certainly upon me and others in the court, to the extent where the prosecutor having heard the family speak, indicated to me that she was not opposing a suspended sentence whereas before, I think, she may have thought otherwise. MIKE SEXTON: In this case, the defendant is given a nine-month suspended sentence and a direction to follow Tony's lead on drug rehabilitation. CHRIS VASS: Now, you've got to do it. If you don't do it you'll be back before the court and then you'll go to prison. That's what we want to avoid. I don't want to send you to jail, but it's up to you. Are you able to do it? ABORIGINAL MAN: Sure. CHRIS VASS: Let's try. CHRIS VASS: I've had several people suggest that if you're doing this for Aboriginal people why aren't you doing it for Vietnamese people, but I think the answer to that is that the Vietnamese people and others who have come to this country have adopted our system voluntarily, whereas the Aboriginal people never ever adopted it voluntarily, it was forced upon them and I think we owe it to them to listen. MIKE SEXTON: The 12-month experiment is a first for an Australian city and is being watched closely by court authorities, police and the Aboriginal community. But the results have already been welcomed, with some urging other communities to take note. MIKE FOUYAXIS, ABORIGINAL LEGAL RIGHTS LAWYER: It's the first step in empowering the Aborig inal community to have a major input as to how they believe young offenders or offenders as such should be dealt with. TONY LINDSAY: I don't think we're getting no more fair deal than anyone else. I think at the end of the day people are going -- it's going to benefit the whole community, if anything. If it works here then it's got to work for the next set of people. That's the way I see it. KERRY O'BRIEN: A story we might re-visit down the track. ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/
