Racism in sentencing confirmed
By Sarah Peart
SYDNEY -- Young Aborigines and Pacific Islanders are subjected to harsher sentences in NSW courts than young white people, a study just released has found.
This confirms the direct experience of young Aboriginal people, who have often revealed stories of constant police harassment and racism at the hands of the “justice” system.
The study found young Pacific Islanders were twice as likely to receive custodial sentences as young white people committing the same offences and with the same general records of offending. Young Aborigines and young people from Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds also received harsher sentences than whites.
The point is lost on the NSW Labor government, the Liberal-National Coalition and the establishment media, which all continue a hysterical “anti-crime” campaign.
Three state politicians -- Gerry Peacocke, Joe Schipp and Tony Windsor -- are organising public meetings around NSW to pressure the Carr government to take even more drastic action “against crime”. One of their complaints is that the Parental Responsibility Act -- which gives police the power to pick up young children and forcibly return them to their homes, and which is overwhelmingly directed at Aboriginal children and youth -- doesn't go far enough.
The media have also been pushing the law-and-order bandwagon along. An article in the “respectable” Sydney Morning Herald carried the headline “Teen gangs high on list of rail passenger fears” and quoted without comment a youth who said the gangs were “ethnic Australian[s] who spend their time hanging around railway stations”.
Far from combating the causes of crime -- including entrenched racism, unemployment and cuts to welfare and recreational services -- the law-and-order campaign will subject young people of colour to further harassment.
