Drunk, begging, no ticket: $100,000 By MEG MUNDELL Saturday 19 January 2002 Andy turns up for court sober, wearing his best pair of jeans. Where he slept last night is anyone's guess. He hasn't had a drink this morning and the bottle is calling. But first, he has the small matter of $100,000 worth of unpaid fines to deal with. Andy is painfully thin, but has a wiry resilience that comes from a lifetime on the streets. The thump of his case folder hitting the desk echoes the gravity of his predicament: 371 warrants issued over five years for minor offences - mostly drinking in public, travelling without a valid ticket, begging. His highest daily total is 13 fines, each around $100. For a 64-year-old unemployed, alcoholic and homeless man with a drinking-related brain injury, the idea of paying off $100,000 might seem laughable. But Andy is not laughing - at worst, the debt could mean more than two years in jail. Luckily for him, today Andy has some substantial legal support - senior counsel Felicity Hampel, senior barrister Brian Bourke, and solicitors from law firm Minter Ellison and the Homeless Persons Legal Clinic, who are assisting him pro bono - and he walks out of court without a conviction. Andy, whose case was heard in the Magistrates Court last month, is one of a growing number of homeless people who are accumulating large fines for minor offences incurred on the street. They include "public order" or transport offences such as drinking in public, trespassing, using offensive language or travelling without a valid ticket. Homeless people are seldom able to pay the fines and over the years many have gone to jail as a result, according to Philip Lynch, coordinator of the Homeless Persons Legal Clinic. Although recent changes to state laws mean that jailing now occurs less frequently - a person must now appear before a magistrate before they can be jailed for unpaid fines - it still happens. Hampel says Andy's case demonstrates the gravity of the problem. "To see a man face $100,000 of fines simply because he was homeless and has an alcohol problem is very disturbing. It was way out of proportion to the social problem he presented." Ted Salerno, case management supervisor at Ozanam House, a men's crisis accommodation service in inner Melbourne, says "more than half" of the people coming through his doors have outstanding fines. Salerno says it's common for homeless people to accumulate unpaid fines, but faced with the more urgent demands of finding food, support and shelter, most don't see them as a priority. But for people such as Andy, the debt can trigger a downward spiral, he says. "Their substance abuse usually escalates. It raises anxiety and can be quite destabilising." Youth solicitor Gavin Green from Werribee Legal Service says fines have a lasting impact on young homeless people. "It adds to their sense of being out of control, of hopelessness. These fines linger long after homelessness issues are sorted out ... it becomes a lasting legacy of a period of chaos in their lives." More than 130 agencies in Victoria, including police, transport operators and local councils, use the PERIN Court (Penalty Enforcement by Registration of Infringement Notices) to chase unpaid fines. Fines for everything from parking infringements to begging roll through the court, gathering costs the longer they remain unpaid. Although it is part of the Magistrates Court, PERIN is not a bricks-and-mortar court but a huge computer, issuing 1800 infringement notices a day - about 90 to 95 per cent of which are eventually paid. But welfare workers and lawyers working with disadvantaged groups say the PERIN system is inflexible, inefficient and discriminatory. They say the system fails to recognise that the homeless lack both the money to pay fines and a letterbox to receive them. Police and transport officers try hard to obtain an address from homeless offenders, perhaps a relative or homeless shelter. But because the population is transient, most of these fines drift around unclaimed, accumulating costs. Lynch argues that fining the homeless for public order offences is unjust. "Homeless people are more likely to be fined, simply because through lack of resources they have nowhere else to drink," he says. Lynch suggests the homeless may be targeted by police and transport officers as a visible and vulnerable group. "It is difficult to see how a homeless person could receive more than 100 fines in one year, up to 13 in one day, unless they were being targeted," he says. "That's nonsense," says Ted Hart, Police Chief Inspector for the Melbourne district. "If the solicitors say we're picking on the homeless, that's absolute crap. The tree-huggers try to raise these issues from time to time." Police say laws are enforced against all offenders and when homeless people are fined for public drinking police are usually responding to complaints from the community. Officers can use discretion in issuing fines, but "it's up to the courts to exercise mercy and judicial judgment, not police", says Hart. "Homelessness doesn't exempt you from obeying the law ... Justice not only has to be done, it has to be seen to be done. Where you live and your social standing is a non-issue." Does a person's appearance or demeanour have any bearing on whether police approach that person? "I suppose if you look dishevelled, you're covered in vomit and you smell of alcohol (police) could presume that you'd probably had too much to drink," replies Hart. "People don't have labels on them saying `I look like a bum, I'm unemployed'. You might find it's someone extremely wealthy who's been cleaning the gutters on their new flat in the middle of the city. You've got to be very careful." Police say they regularly meet with council, business, welfare and community groups to discuss how to handle street-based offences such as drinking and begging. And Hampel says that, while the system is flawed, she does have sympathy for the police. "They're right at the coalface. It can be difficult and unpleasant work." But she thinks that police and transport operators need to be educated to consider the offences as social problems, and to refer people to homeless services. "People who are homeless, have psychological conditions or substance abuse issues are not in the same position as everyone else," she says. Leanne Acreman, manager of the Salvation Army-run Flagstaff Crisis Accommodation Centre in West Melbourne, does not believe police target the homeless and says the centre cooperates well with police. And referring people to homeless services won't entirely solve the problem, she says. "The shelters are full - Flagstaff turns away 30 people a night - and police know they can't just leave people on our doorstep." A Melbourne City spokeswoman says the council has tried to address homelessness by putting $1million into subsidised housing. She says fining homeless people for offences such as drinking and begging is "ridiculous and counter-productive", and not council policy. However, an MCC bylaw forbids public drinking in the CBD; various local and state laws cover other minor offences. Melbourne's private transport operators also play a key role in the debate. Flinders Street Station is a popular meeting point for street people and a nightly stop-off for the city's soup vans. Most of Andy's fines were collected around Flinders Street Station, his regular haunt and effectively his home. Connex (which runs the station), National Express and Yarra Trams stress that they do not gain any revenue from fines, and that they do not issue fines directly, but report people who commit offences to the Department of Infrastructure. The department then administers fines under Victoria's Transport Act. Last financial year, the department collected $4.8 million in transport fines through PERIN, all of which went to consolidated revenue. The companies confirm that officers try to identify the person and obtain some form of postal address, which is forwarded to the department. Discretion can be exercised, but there is no official protocol for dealing with the homeless. The companies say they are open to discussion. Yarra Trams already provides St Vincent de Paul with 40 free tickets a month for its more needy clients, and Connex says it has been "a major sponsor" of Melbourne Citymission for the past three years. A spokeswoman for the Infrastructure Department says that offenders can write a letter (or get someone else to write a letter) appealing against the fine. But Salerno says many people with homelessness, addiction or mental health issues cannot advocate for themselves, and may not have access to assistance. One such person is Kevin, who is partially blind and has lived on the streets for almost 30 years. He says he cannot read the digital writing on ticket machines, or markings on the tickets themselves. Kevin has received more than 20 transport fines, sent to his brother's address, which he tries to pay out of his disability pension before court costs mount up. "It's not easy," he says. "I have real trouble surviving. But I try to keep above the law." He says transport officers don't want to know about his disability or the fact that he's homeless. "They say, I'm just doing my job." The PERIN system is notoriously complicated. It was set up to help clear the backlog of minor offences cluttering open court, but many lawyers find it confusing and problematic; even the PERIN Court's senior registrar admits the system is "very complex". If a fine remains unpaid for one month, a courtesy letter is issued. There is no distinction between fines that are returned unclaimed and those that are received but ignored. After two months, an unpaid fine is registered with PERIN and costs are added. If it languishes three months, a warrant is issued. Up until this point, a person can challenge the fine in the Magistrates Court - where several sentencing options are available, including community service - or apply for the fine to be reconsidered by the issuing agency. But once a warrant is executed, these options disappear and the person may have assets seized or be imprisoned. "At the warrant stage, homeless people are less likely to have assets against which to levy payment," says Lynch. "Under the PERIN system, only the poor are imprisoned." Gary Sullivan is convenor of the PERIN Fines Working Group and a solicitor at the West Heidelberg Community Legal Service. Both organisations provide free legal representation for people on low incomes and lobby for law reform. The PERIN system is complicated, but it's also very popular, he says. More and more matters pass through the PERIN Court, because it's cheap and it generates a huge revenue. It works for most people. But not the homeless. Sullivan concedes there have been welcome reforms in recent years; now, court registrars have greater discretion to cancel fines, and people with a mental disability may have fines waived. Under this last provision, the magistrate wiped Andy's $100,000 fine and recorded no conviction, so long as he complied with a care plan that included shelter and meals. But Sullivan argues that the reforms have not gone far enough. People still end up in court because they are poor. "Ministers and senior bureaucrats (assume) people won't, rather than can't pay their fines. They simply don't understand that if people don't have the means, they won't be able to pay." Meg Mundell is deputy editor of The Big Issue, which will publish this article in its next edition.
