Sisters Inside, which is raising funds to pay off court fines of Aboriginal women, says government has tried to ‘discredit’ it

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The organisation behind a funding campaign that has raised almost $300,000 to pay off the unpaid court fines of Aboriginal women in Western Australia has criticised the McGowan government for not working with them to clear the debt.

In a letter to the attorney general, John Quigley, the Sisters Inside chief executive, Debbie Kilroy, said she was “shocked” by his response to the campaign, saying that “instead of working alongside [us], your government has chosen to discredit Sisters Inside and has avoided addressing the ongoing, systemic issues raised directly by the campaign”.

The fundraising campaign has raised more than $17,000 a day since it was established on 5 January in response to the arrest of the Perth actor Reuben Yorkshire, a Noongar man, who spent five days in jail for a $1,700 debt before an anonymous benefactor paid off the rest of his fines and secured his release.

Kilroy said attempts by the campaign to receive a list of all the Aboriginal women with active arrest warrants due to unpaid fines had not been successful.

Quigley’s office said he “shares the aim of Sisters Inside to keep people out of prison for fine default alone” and aimed to introduce legislation to parliament in the first half of the year to end the practice.

A spokeswoman for Quigley, who is on annual leave, said the government had not tried to discredit the campaign but to provide accurate information about the number of people jailed for fine default alone, which has fallen sharply in the past 12 months.

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The reforms have been promised by Labor since the 2014 death in custody of Aboriginal woman Ms Dhu, who was held at a police lock-up for unpaid fines, and passed cabinet in November.

As of this week Sisters Inside, which is administering the campaign, has paid $23,658.56 in unpaid court fines and costs for 13 women.

Kilroy told Guardian Australia they were prepared to pay the fines of an additional 55 women but were waiting for the fundraising site GoFundMe to release the money. The organisation dipped into other funding to clear the fines paid so far.

Invoices seen by Guardian Australia, which nominate the sheriff’s office in Perth as the payee, show debts ranging from $132 to $4,559. The average amount per person was $1,800.

The total owed is split between court-ordered fines for things like traffic offences or breaching an order; court costs; and other administrative costs.

Kilroy said that one young mother, who is one of the 55 women whose debts are waiting to be paid, owed more than $9,000 in costs for $8,000 in fines.

“They just can’t ever get their head above water, which is why they can’t pay it,” she said.

In another case, an Aboriginal grandmother contacted the campaign after she was told she could lose her house in an attempt to recoup the debt.

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Under current WA law, the Fines Enforcement Registry can issue a warrant of commitment ordering the arrest of a person who has unpaid court fines. The debt is reduced by $250 for every day a person spends in custody and the fines are cleared concurrently, based on the largest single fine. If debts are paid in cash, however, the total amount must be paid.

Kilroy said one of the debts paid belonged to a woman who had been remanded in Melaleuca Remand and Reintegration Facility for unpaid fines but was released after her fines were paid on 8 January.

Figures provided by the WA department of corrective services showed that there were no Aboriginal women in jail for fine default alone on Tuesday 8 January, but one Aboriginal woman was held for fine default on the Sunday and Monday prior.

During the first few days of the campaign, the department said, there were an average of two women and five men in jail each day for fine defaulting, most of whom were not Aboriginal.