EXPERT REJECTS ZERO TOLERANCE STAND

A former Family Court judge yesterday condemned the zero-tolerance
heroin strategy that the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, is believed to be
interested in learning more about.

Mr John Fogarty, who recently retired from the Family Court and is now
a board member of a United Nations-affiliated child-welfare group,
said the approach harked back to the dark era of Australia's
settlement as a penal colony.

``The zero-tolerance approach is an untenable policy which should be
removed from public discussion of drug issues,'' Mr Fogarty told a
seminar on youth prisons.

``The idea that deep-seated social and personal issues of young
persons leading to drug use can be miraculously overcome by
prosecuting and imprisoning is nonsense. It is akin to a reversion to
the penal attitude of 200 years ago at the beginning of the
establishment of our society.''

Mr Fogarty said the Premier, Mr Jeff Kennett, and the Chief Police
Commissioner, Mr Neil Comrie, should be commended for their rejection
of zero tolerance as a way to deal with the heroin problem.

``Zero-tolerance policing, with its emphasis on hard-hitting and
custodial punishment of minor offences, would impact particularly on
the types and number of persons sentenced to senior youth-training
centres, causing further strain in our justice system and great
injustice to the individuals concerned.''

Mr Fogarty said it was not an exaggeration to describe the heroin
problem as a community crisis. But he said Mr Kennett's humane policy
on heroin contradicted his Government's push for a new privatised
youth detention centre, first announced last year.

``I totally support what the Premier has done on the drug issue, but
it's totally inconsistent with the handing over of these youth
training centres to private organisations when you've got 80 per cent
of the inmates drug affected.'' He said young offenders would not get
appropriate treatment in a private detention centre.

``They will be worse off yet, at the same time, the Premier is
advocating in the wider perspective a very tolerant, preventative process.''

Defence for Children International, the human rights watchdog of which
Mr Fogarty is a member, wrote to the Premier about its concerns that
Victoria could soon get Australia's first private youth-detention centre.

Mr Fogarty said the organisation received a reply from the Premier's
Department saying the Government was considering a proposal to build a
private centre but that no decision had been made.

Mr Fogarty was speaking at a seminar held by Melbourne University's
Centre for Public Policy and LaTrobe University's school of law.