STATE DRUG LAWS TARGET VIETNAMESE-BORN OFFENDERS, STUDY SAYS

Victoria Police were targeting Vietnamese-born drug offenders at a
rate more than twice as high as in NSW, according to a new study.

The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Criminology, also found that Vietnamese offenders were exposed to
inequitably harsh penalties under Victorian drug laws.

The report found that in 1998, Victorian police made 120
heroin-related arrests per 100,000 Vietnamese-born Australians,
compared to just 53 in NSW.

Study author Nick Crofts, director of Melbourne's Centre for Harm
Reduction at the MacFarlane Burnett Institute, said the proportion of
Victorian prisoners born in Vietnam jumped from 0.5 per cent to 5.1
per cent in the 10 years to 1998.

Vietnamese-born people represented more than 40 per cent of all
persons arrested by Victorian police for selling heroin between 1994
and 1998, despite making up just 1.2 per cent of Victoria's
population.

Dr Crofts said the over-representation was fuelled by the high level
of media focus and public outrage over Vietnamese drug sellers in the
early 1990s.

The study also reported that Victorian courts often imposed harsher
penalties on young Vietnamese-born offenders, despite the fact that
Australian-born drug offenders were much more likely to also have
committed violent and property crimes.

Dr Crofts said laws reflected a community and government view that
drug sellers should receive harsher penalties than those who commit
other crimes to support their habit.

"The impact of the laws certainly is racist, whether or not the
intent of those laws were racist I'd imagine it was not," Dr Crofts
said.

"But the Sentencing Act was amended at a time when there was strong
anti-Vietnamese sentiment in the community in relation to heroin."

In 1997, the Sentencing Act was amended to give greater penalties for
drug traffickers and included a new category of "serious drug
offender."

Dr Crofts welcomed the state government's review of sentencing laws,
particularly the proposal to establish Drug Courts.