A WEST Australian government plan to raid welfare payments and increase jail time for fine defaulters will unfairly affect people on low incomes, according to a lobby group.
Corrective Services Minister Joe Francis said he would examine the option of compulsorily deducting payments for unpaid fines from welfare recipients and extending jail time to make imprisonment a less appealing option.
WA Council of Social Service chief executive Irina Cattalini said the approach was unfair and would target the poor.
“There are some real inequities and systemic failings that make it difficult for people who are on low incomes to pay that in the first place.”
Ms Cattalini said it was inequitable for the government to use levers in the welfare system to force people to pay off fines.
She questioned whether fines were an appropriate method to curb offending and whether the government offered flexible payment options.
A woman known for cultural reasons as Miss Dhu was never given a custodial sentence by any magistrate, her full court record shows.
The 22-year-old was ultimately incarcerated for not paying a fine that a Geraldton magistrate imposed on her as an alternative to prison.
When she died in a Pilbara lockup on August 4, Miss Dhu was serving out a $1000 fine for a clash with a police officer 4½ years earlier, when she was 18.
Police took her to the Hedland Health Campus three times over the three days she was in the watch-house. The first two times she was deemed by medical staff as fit to return to her cell. On the third occasion they took her, a day before she was due to be released, she arrived with no pulse and was declared dead within an hour.
Labor’s corrective services spokesman Paul Papalia said fines were “cut out” at a rate of $250 for every day spent in prison although it costs taxpayers $345 a day to keep a person in jail.
Mr Papalia said one-third of all women jailed in WA were there for unpaid fines and, of those, two-thirds were Aboriginal.
“It does not get people to pay fines and it does not change their behaviour,” he said.
Deaths in Custody Watch Committee secretary Marc Newhouse said the state government was monetising the issue of unpaid fines and had failed to address the circumstances that led to fines.
“It would be far more to the point to be able to address the offending behaviour,” he said.