New Order in the Court

He's just 22, but already toby has spent eight years in and out of institutions and jail. His life has been a hellish rollercoaster of heroin and crime, and doing time has done nothing to halt it. Today he's been back in court: too many missed appointments for a drug treatment program have put his bail at risk. But he's been given another chance, perhaps his last, and he knows it. "I've never had a better opportunity than I've got today," he says. "It makes you think people have faith in you."

Repeat offenders rarely have kind words for the legal system. What makes Toby's praise even more unusual is that he's an Aboriginal man in a nation where indigenous people and the justice system have long had an unhappy relationship. Aborigines, or Kooris as they're called in Victoria, are the most over-represented racial group in the state's jails: 12 times more likely than other Victorians to be in prison. But Toby has just come out of Courtroom Four in the outer-Melbourne Broadmeadows Magistrates Court, where a radical new approach to curbing indigenous crime is under way. Here, every two weeks conventional hearings are replaced by the Koori Court, which brings the law and indigenous people together in an informal setting and, the court says, "tailors sentencing orders to the cultural needs of Koori offenders."

The hope is that if the court can make Kooris feel better understood and address the reasons for their law-breaking, they might finally turn their backs on crime. Halfway through the two-year pilot program, signs from the only metropolitan Aboriginal court in Australia to be established by an act of parliament are encouraging - of 80 defendants who've been sentenced, only five have offended again. Similar results are being seen in two regional pilots, and a Children's Court is now planned.

Unlike mainstream courtrooms, this one is hung with Aboriginal paintings; in place of a bench and witness box, comfortable swivel chairs surround an oval table. Magistrate Ann Collins sits with two Koori elders, a police prosecutor, the Koori corrections officer, the court's Koori justice worker and the offender, who is introduced to everyone. Only those who plead guilty to offences less serious than domestic violence, and who want to participate, come before the Koori Court. Once they do, they're encouraged to explain their actions, as are attending friends and relatives. Collins' sentencing options, including jail time, are no different from those of any other magistrate. But as elder Norma Langford says, "the way of getting there is completely different."

Substance abuse is at the heart of almost every case. Several of those before the court today are intellectually impaired as well as addicted to drugs, including one who pleads guilty to 39 charges of aggravated burglary - a youth seemingly lost to crime. But those around the table search for solutions. Which Koori program could help him? How would he attend? Aboriginal justice worker Terrie Stewart, who advises Collins on programs that can form part of community-based corrections orders, says cases here move more slowly than in other courts, perhaps lasting several months while various alternatives are tried. "We look at things that assist people," she says. "Some work. Some don't, so you try something different."