By Robert Milne
DARWIN — On May 12, an unemployed homeless man was sentenced to 12 months' jail for the theft of a baby towel valued at $15. Kevin Anthony Cook took the towel from the backyard of a house on April 15 to use for a blanket because he was cold.
Because it was Cook's third property offence since the introduction of the Northern Territory's 1997 mandatory sentencing laws, he had to serve an automatic jail term of 12 months. Cook's earlier property offences were mostly for the theft of food and other items necessary for survival.
Cook saw no alternative but to plead guilty because he realised he was now on his "third strike" for the rest of his life. Cook's lawyer, Kirsty Gowans, said that the penalty far outweighed the minor nature of the offence. "We have not come very far from transporting people for stealing a loaf of bread", she said.
North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid policy manager John Sheldon believes that, if it were not for mandatory sentencing, Cook would have been fined or released on bond. "All Australians should be outraged by this sentence and ashamed of mandatory sentencing", Sheldon said.
The case received considerable national attention and publicity that exposed the discriminatory nature of NT's laws. For example, if Cook had stolen the towel from a shop, he would not have been jailed because shoplifting does not come under mandatory sentencing.
Mandatory sentencing forces magistrates to jail people for most crimes involving property. Adult offenders receive a mandatory two weeks' jail for a first offence, three months for a second offence and one year's imprisonment for a third offence. Juvenile offenders receive a mandatory 28 days for a second offence. At present 90% of under-17s in detention in the NT are Aborigines.
Mandatory sentencing leads to increasing imprisonment of homeless people, many of whom are alcoholics, intellectually and mentally disabled people and juveniles. Jails are not equipped to deal with people with such problems.
There is no conclusive proof that the laws work as a crime prevention measure. Careful examination of Neighbourhood Watch statistics indicates that crime may have increased in some areas. This is not very surprising, since mandatory sentencing has not been shown to work anywhere in the world.
The laws also breach international human rights covenants to which Australia is a signatory.
Mandatory sentencing removes the discretion of judges and magistrates to sentence offenders proportionally to the seriousness of the crime.
Territorians for Effective Sentencing (TES) is a group whose members are concerned about crime prevention and how crime and social problems are dealt with in NT. It calls for repeal of mandatory sentencing laws.
TES believes that the money spent on upholding these laws would be better spent on early intervention programs, community service and programs to deal with alcoholism and homelessness — the social problems which lead to much petty crime. It costs $12,432 to keep a juvenile in detention for 28 days, and the NT already has more than three times the national average rate of imprisonment.
The NT government has proposed to amend the laws to allow magistrates to use discretion in sentencing first-time offenders in "exceptional circumstances". TES is concerned that the new clause is available only to first-time adult offenders who have the financial means to make restitution, are able to prove their previous "good character" and show that they have cooperated with police.
The homeless people, Aboriginal people and mentally ill people who are disadvantaged by the laws may not be able to meet the strict criteria of the amendments.
To join the campaign against mandatory sentencing, contact TES by post at GPO Box 3180, Darwin 0801 or by fax at (08) 8941 3773.