No progress on mandatory sentencing Source: AAP|Published: Thursday July 6, 11:07 AM DARWIN: Three months after Prime Minister John Howard struck a $5 million deal with the Northern Territory government on mandatory sentencing of children, an Aboriginal legal group today complained about a lack of progress and consultation. North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Services spokesman Gordon Renouf said neither the NT government nor police had consulted key stakeholders about developing a system of diversionary programs as an alternative to children being incarcerated for minor property offences. "A whole lot of people who have something to contribute to this have not, as far as I'm aware, been consulted," Mr Renouf told ABC radio. "I'm also surprised about how long this is taking and the fact that we haven't seen, as far as I'm aware, any of the $5 million the Commonwealth is to give to the Territory." Chief Minister Denis Burke agreed to water down his mandatory sentencing laws as they applied to children in early April when Mr Howard was under pressure from his own backbench for the Federal Parliament to overturn the regime. In return for $5 million, Mr Burke agreed to lift the minimum age for jail from 17 to 18 years, introduce more interpreters to the court system and create more sentencing alternatives to detention for juveniles. The NT government is understood to have planned to reveal its new system three weeks ago including its contentious definition of what constitutes a serious offence. But ongoing negotiations with the Federal Government had delayed the announcement. -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
