Campaign aims to raise $100,000 to clear warrants of commitment and pressure WA government to change law

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Organisers of a fundraiser aimed at releasing up to 100 Aboriginal women who have been jailed for unpaid fines will meet with authorities on Monday to begin clearing the debts in an effort to pressure the Western Australian government to act on a two-year-old promise to change the law.

The campaign had raised more than $25,000 as of Monday evening and aims to raise $100,000 – enough to clear the warrants of commitment of more than 100 people that have either been jailed or are at risk of being jailed due to unpaid court fines.

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The fundraiser was launched following news that the Perth actor and Yirri Yarkin dancer Reuben Yorkshire, a Noongar man, had been arrested on a warrant of commitment for unpaid fines and ordered to spend six days in Hakea prison to clear a $1,700 debt.

Yorkshire was released on Sunday, five days after being arrested after a random police stop on Scarborough beach, after an anonymous benefactor paid off his diminished debt of $638.

His uncle, Warren Yorkshire, said his nephew had never been jailed before and believed he had been racially profiled by police.

“There are better ways to deal with unpaid fines, he could have done community service,” Warren Yorkshire said. “Instead he is in Hakea with all the murderers that he would otherwise never have been exposed to.”

Finding an anonymous benefactor to pay off the fine is the quickest way to get someone out of jail under the current system, Indigenous rights worker Gerry Georgatos said.

In September 2017, a Guardian reader donated more than $3,000 to secure the release of an Aboriginal woman with five children who was arrested on an outstanding warrant of commitment for unpaid fines when she called police to resolve a family violence complaint.

The first woman whose fine will be paid off from the fundraising effort is a Noongar woman who has been told by police that she will be arrested if they are called to her house for a domestic violence complaint because she has outstanding fines.

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The Western Australian government has repeatedly promised to repeal the jail-for-fines law following the death in custody of Yamatji woman Ms Dhu, who was jailed for unpaid fines, in 2014.

A spokeswoman for the state’s attorney general, John Quigley, said he “hopes to be in a position to introduce new laws to reform fines enforcement in the first half of 2019”.

“This will include significantly restricting the circumstances in which a warrant of commitment (WOC) can be issued and requiring that any application for a WOC be made to a magistrate,” Quigley’s office said in a statement. “The attorney general is considering the need to clear outstanding unserved WOCs as part of the reform package.”

Quigley has personally committed to repealing the law, which was a Labor election promise.

His office said the fines enforcement registrar was an independent court officer and still retained legislated powers to issue warrants as a measure of last resort.

Western Australia is the only state that regularly jails people for unpaid court fines, and research conducted by the Labor party before it won government showed the majority of those jailed over unpaid fines were Aboriginal women.

Georgatos said that, although the arrest rate for unpaid fines had fallen, it still stood at about 10 a day.

The chief executive of Sisters Inside, Debbie Kilroy, said she started the fundraiser because she was sick of waiting on the WA government to act.

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“The wheels are just turning so slowly,” Kilroy told Guardian Australia. “This is a priority for many Australians across the country, it’s not just a West Australian issue.

“It’s nice to say we will get draft legislation in six months, but come on.”

Kilroy said the fundraiser was a “decarceration strategy”.

“We will use the money to get as many people out of jail as possible,” she said.