FED: Orphan s suicide will affect Senate inquiry Kerr

AAP General News (Australia)
02-11-2000
FED: Orphan s suicide will affect Senate inquiry Kerr

The federal opposition says the suicide of a 15-year-old orphan in a Darwin detention
centre yesterday would impact powerfully on a federal parliamentary inquiry into mandatory
sentencing of children.

The Groote Eylandt boy has become the first person to die in custody on a mandatory
sentence in the Northern Territory.

The NT government says the Groote Eylandt boy was found unconscious in his room with
a sheet around his neck at 6.30 last night, but died this morning.

He was serving a 28-day sentence for breaking into a community building and stealing
pens, pencils and textas worth $50 last November as well as other minor property offences.

Labor's justice spokesman DUNCAN KERR, who helped to establish a Senate inquiry into
NT and West Australian mandatory sentencing of children, says the tragedy is the worst
imaginable outcome of such a punishment regime.

But Northern Territory Chief Minister DENIS BURKE denies there is a connection between
the mandatory sentencing laws and the boy's death.

Mr BURKE has told ABC radio it is cheap politics to connect the boy's death to mandatory
sentencing.

AAP RTV rmg/ss/msk/jn/gmw/wz

KEYWORD: MANDATORY KERR (CANBERRA)

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