E/CN.4/2002/24/Add.1 page 37 “Figures for the June 1999 quarter indicate that 76 per cent of all prisoners in the Northern Territory and 34 per cent of all prisoners in Western Australia were Indigenous. The rate of imprisonment of Indigenous people in Western Australia was 21.7 times higher than that of non-Indigenous populations. The rates in the other states for which statistics are available are also unacceptably high - 15.7 times higher in South Australia, 12.2 times higher in Victoria, 11.3 times higher in Queensland, 9.9 times higher in the Northern Territory and 5.1 times higher in Tasmania;” “Aborigine adults make up 17 per cent of prison inmates but only 1.6 per cent of Australia’s adult population. Indigenous children are also over-represented in the juvenile justice system, with about 40 per cent of children in ‘corrective institutions for children’ identified as Indigenous in the 1996 census.” 78. In 1987, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found that Indigenous people are more likely to die while in custody than are non-Indigenous people and reported on the deaths of 99 Aboriginal people between 1980 and the end of 1990. The Commissioner reported that in the decade since that time 147 Indigenous people died; 17.2 per cent of all prison deaths in the 1990s have been Indigenous peoples compared to 12.1 per cent in the 1980s. The measures adopted by the governments at all levels have not yet produced concrete results. Mandatory sentencing 79. The mandatory sentencing which was introduced in the State of Western Australia and in the Northern Territory in 1997 is tending to aggravate the already precarious social situation of Aboriginals. At first sight the relevant law is not discriminatory since it is aimed at punishing a number of offences against private property without distinctions relating to ethnic or racial origin. But in the effects of its implementation it is discriminatory since it covers the kinds of offence generally committed by persons belonging to an ethnic minority and of low economic and social condition, mainly Aboriginals. The sentence established by the law is not proportional to the offence committed and allows the judge no discretion. In brief, the sentences are as follows: (a) Adults: first offence, 14 days’ imprisonment; second offence, 90 days’ imprisonment; third offence, 12 months; (b) Juveniles: second offence, minimum of 28 days’ imprisonment or alternative penalty; in the case of reoffenders, a minimum of 28 days’ imprisonment. Studies have shown that the offences generally punished under this law relate to theft. But the law has had no real effect on reducing these offences while at the same time increasing the prison population, notably in the Northern Territory (see table 5).