More than a quarter of Canberra’s daily average prison population is Indigenous but only 2 per cent of people in the ACT identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.

The only way people get to prison is to be sentenced there by a court.

Ipso facto the courts are the problem, surely?

Wrong.

Our judges and magistrates deliver justice as best they can. While they should – and in my experience, invariably do, exercise considerable leniency in this jurisdiction, there is only so much that can be done within the confines of the manifold criminal statutes and broad judge-made law that they are bound to uphold.

So the lawyers must be the problem?

Wrong.

My experience of those at the Aboriginal Legal Service is overwhelming one of utter commitment against sometimes impossible odds. They regularly have to deal with up to a dozen matters in a variety of morning lists – seeking bail for various defendants, many of whom may be running up against legislative presumptions against bail and who have no work or place to live or anything positive to put as part of their applications, and also having to take instructions and give advice on substantive, serious charges. It’s no easy task. Not only are they thoughtful and caring, they are lawyers of the first order, too.

There should be more of them: a far better use of our coming ACT Budget surplus than promises to fix roads and footpaths that aren’t broken.

So, court structures must be the issue?

Wrong.

The Galambany circle-sentencing court is 20 years old this year. Comprised of a magistrate and several elders, it has done magnificent work. My appearances in it have been infrequent but, every........

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