Vital step for indigenous justice

Historic, long-overdue reform achieved in Western Australia this week will reduce the overrepresentation of indigenous people in the justice system. The state’s parliament has passed legislation to ensure fine defaulters will no longer be immediately taken into custody, with warrants for imprisonment only to be issued on the orders of a magistrate, as a last resort. The reform will have “a very quick impact on the number of Aboriginal people inside prisons”, as WA’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Ben Wyatt, said. WA, which has been jailing indigenous people at a 70 per cent higher rate than the national average, frequently because of unpaid fines, is the last jurisdiction to abolish automatic imprisonment for fine defaulters. More than 300 defaulters have been jailed in the state this financial year.

The changes were sparked by the tragic fate of a Yamatji woman, known as Miss Dhu, who died in custody in August 2014, at the age of 22, after being locked up for $3622 in unpaid fines. Miss Dhu’s story was revealed over months of exclusive reports in this newspaper by Paige Taylor and Michael McKenna. In September 2014, a witness who was in the next cell to Miss Dhu, Malcolm Dick Wilson, then 61, told how he heard the young woman vomiting day and night and crying out in pain. He corroborated the version of events earlier provided to The Australian by Ms Dhu’s partner, Dion Ruffin. Police took Ms Dhu to hospital twice during her ordeal but on both occasions she was deemed fit to be returned to the lockup.

In December 2016, the WA coroner ruled Ms Dhu was treated inhumanely. She died at the emergency department of the Hedland Health Campus during her third visit to the facility in two days. The coroner said she died as a result of septicaemia and pneumonia, with osteomyelitis (a bone infection) complicating a previous rib fracture. Mr Wilson told The Australian that on the day Miss Dhu died, she “got quiet” before he saw two police officers drag her across the floor of the lockup. Miss Dhu’s story would “make a statue weep’’, says WA Attorney-General and former barrister John Quigley, who frequently defended the police in his legal career. While the state had a duty of care, she was “dragged out of a police van’’ on her last day, when she was extremely ill, and “dropped like a dead kangaroo’’. The old system was also “economic madness’’, Mr Quigley noted. It cost taxpayers at least $6000 to imprison one fine defaulter for 10 days, to cut out a $2500 fine, he said.

The new legislation is practical. From now on, fine defaulters will have the fines garnisheed from their wages or bank accounts. In cases where they were unable to pay, they would be expected to perform community service. Only those who ignored court orders would face the possibility of being returned to court and ultimately jailed — not for fine defaulting, but for ignoring court orders. Such reform should have been enacted years ago, out of decency and common sense. The bill took almost three years to draft and make its way through parliament, underlining the need for government to move more quickly, but still carefully, on sensitive issues. Its passage was long scheduled and not connected with Black Lives Matter protests. While too late for Miss Dhu and those who grieve for her, and others like her, it is an important step in closing the gap.