Indigenous sentencing outcomes: A comparative analysis of the Nunga and magistrates courts in South Australia.

Source: (2012) Flinders Law Journal. 14:359-382.

Indigenous sentencing courts are touted by Australian governments as a
key response to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in
Custody. Despite their introduction over a decade ago, research on these
courts, particularly in terms of sentencing outcomes for Indigenous
offenders, has been limited. This study provides a comparative analysis
of sentencing outcomes for Indigenous offenders sentenced through
Indigenous and conventional court processes. Using data from the South
Australian conventional Magistrates Court and Nunga Court between
2007 and 2009, the analysis highlights three sentencing outcomes of
particular importance for their recognised differential impacts on
Indigenous offenders: imprisonment, monetary, and disqualification of
driver’s licence orders. Independent of other crucial sentencing factors,
defendants sentenced in the Nunga Court were significantly less likely
than Indigenous offenders in the conventional courts to receive these
types of orders. (author’s abstract)