Submission

NT Court's Handwashing Ignores Racist Past:

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The NT Judiciary claim, "they had no say over mandatory sentencing"   
(29 May, 1999, NT NEWS.) The NT Judiciary had plenty of say over sentencing - without government cramping their style - in the 1870's, when land theft, abduction, rape, violence and the punitive killings of Aboriginal people, by the Northern Territory Police, were out of control.  There may have been some moral justification for mandatory sentencing then, when normal laws were inadequate to protect Aboriginal people, in a climate of conquest and "frontier attitudes". To introduce mandatory sentencing now, over a century later, when the descendants of the original "victims of crime" - the Aboriginal people - comprise 80% of the NT prison population is blatantly racist. 

A belief that the racist injustice of mandatory sentencing will somehow solve the problems caused by racist injustice cannot be argued seriously. Mandatory sentencing will only benefit a government intent on further controlling Aboriginal people.  NT Police are empowered to threaten successively heavier mandatory sentences to people (usually Aboriginal) the NT Police believe are causing problems. Mandatory sentencing also enables trivial offences to be used to target people who have political opinions - or who engage in political activities - that a long entrenched tradracist government is unable to counter democratically. 

An example: PARIAH posters expose discrimination and abuse of office in the NT to the public. There has been no denial of, or legal action over, PARIAH content. Instead our political opponents report the removal of PARIAH posters as criminal damage to the NT Police.
 
First poster - two weeks imprisonment, second poster - three months imprisonment, third poster - one year imprisonment. PARIAH members have been threatened with criminal damage charges, by the NT Police on three occasions - the last (8 September, 1999) being used as the basis for the seizure of PARIAH's computer.  

Mandatory sentencing is a powerful (if undemocratic) means of control. The effective empowerment of NT Police to imprison people is a mockery of the Constitutional seperation of Police and the Judiciary.  

The real crimes of discrimination and abuse of office are not subject to mandatory sentencing. PARIAH believe the percentage of Aboriginal people in the NT prison system would fall dramatically if they were. 

Mick Lambe - Coordinator: PARIAH