Australians like to think we are all equal under the law but in the area of racial inequality, criminal injustice grows unhindered. Where better to see this sad fact than the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory? The brutal industry that awaits young children and teenagers taken into custody in that jurisdiction has been exposed over the past eight months at hearings in Darwin, Alice Springs and various communities.
Since October, royal commissioners Margaret White and Mick Gooda have taken evidence from inmates, families, prison guards and administrators, government ministers, sociologists, health workers and elders. Much of it has been harrowing or incredible. The commission was established to provide justice for all, but at times it has been justice itself that has been on trial.
It followed the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners program last July showing youths being stripped, hooded and restrained in mechanical chairs, confined in solitary and being gassed by guards.
The commission got off on the wrong foot when the first appointed commissioner, BrianMartin, resigned following trenchant criticism of his links with NT governments. It was not as though the NT government was in the dark. There have been at least three well-publicised inquiries and reports, warning the NT administration of the abuse and drew on much of the Four Corners footage.
The reaction in Darwin was reprehensible. With an election looming, then chief minister Adam Giles claimed he had never seen the footage, stripped his multi-portfolio minister John Elferink of corrections and announced a tit-for-tat board of inquiry with almost identical terms of reference as the royal commission. Local talkback radio callers complained that another inquiry was a waste of money.
The NT commission will cost $54 million â split between the federal and territory governments â and after two extensions, commissioners will now hand down their findings on September 30.
A quarter of a century ago, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody delivered a report containing 339 recommendations. The commissioners described the report as "an indictment of the operation of the legal and corrective services system in respect of the most disadvantaged group in Australian society". Their recommendations included legislation to ensure imprisonment was a sanction of last resort.
Today, imprisonment rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have soared by almost 80 per cent. Only a third of the NT population is Aboriginal, yet 97 per cent of juveniles in detention there are Indigenous.
The NT royal commission has begun its last two weeks of public hearings. There have been calls for a separate justice system for young offenders; submissions to the commission underscore the systematic delivery of unequal justice. The challenge facing commissioners is to balance community safety with detaining offenders. But, a flawed policy that emphasises illegal, abusive punishment of juveniles above preventive and rehabilitative approaches has made the community less safe.