First Koori Court in NSW opens in Parramatta
New South Wales’ first Koori Youth Court opened yesterday in Parramatta with the aim of reducing incarceration rates among young indigenous people, who currently make up around 60 per cent of the juvenile prison population in the state. The new court, in which two Indigenous elders will sit alongside a magistrate and help come to a decision about sentencing, is modelled in the image of other Koori Courts in the country and a similar system for the Maori population of New Zealand. Both the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Bringing Them Home report recommended that the legal system in Australia be modified to make it less culturally alienating and more tailored to the needs of Aboriginal offenders and their community. But criticisms have been made saying that the alternative system makes little or no difference to rates of re-offence, suggesting that there are serious limitations as to what the program is able to achieve.
NSW’s first Koori Youth Court to target Indigenous imprisonment rates in western Sydney trial