The Law Report: 24 February 2004 Part One - Broome Magistrate Antoine Bloemen
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/lawrpt/stories/s1050905.htm]
Damien Carrick: Today: Juveniles and the Justice System in Western Australia.
Later, the Perth Children’s Court Judge accused of being too soft on young offenders.
But first, the Broome Magistrate, who after sentencing, offers incentives to keep offenders out of his court.
Last Thursday, an 11-year-old Aboriginal girl, a repeat offender from a troubled family, appeared in the Broome Magistrate’s Court on charges of car theft.
The local magistrate is Belgian born Antoine Bloemen.
In hearing the case he repeated an offer that he’d made to the girl the last time she appeared before him: that if she stops offending, he and his wife will take her on a European holiday. This is just one such incentive he’s offered to kids to appear before him, to get them off the criminal justice merry-go-round.
Antoine Bloemen: I’m one of those believers that if you sentence too quickly to a detention cellar, and the detention cellar is really a jail. And I told her if I sent her there, and I sent her for six months, she will have much more experience of how to break into my car, how to break into a house, how to do a lot of crimes. I thought, Now we have to find a different way. I took a break for a short time, I thought about it, and I thought Well, I will breach her of the youth community based order I put her on, and thereafter I will put her on an intensive youth supervision order. And then I want the young lady to know that there are other ways in life. I want also her to know that not all of us were born with a silver spoon in our hand, and I thought, I’m going to take her on a trip. As a matter of fact I’m going to take her to a place where I know best, and that’s my own little village in Belgium. I then will show her where I was born, the lifestyle we had and my lifestyle when I was very young was very tough, because it was merely after the war. I will show her where I committed a few little crimes, like stealing apples, stealing pears, we couldn’t do shoplifting because there were no big shops, so we had to steal apples and pears. I would show her where I stole a few bicycles. We couldn’t steal cars because there were no cars. And I thought, That will show her also that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and that there are other ways of life than just crime, jail in, jail out, like a ping pong ball.
Damien Carrick: So what happened? You made that offer to her and she subsequently appeared before you on other charges.
Antoine Bloemen: Well I repeated the offer the way before, she then was sent back to Broome. And it is my understanding that there was no-one really here to receive her when she got here. She met her sister who has many more offences, and went with her sister and slept in a car, which was stolen. Therefore the charge. So she came back before me on Thursday, and what I’ve done today, I have again breached of the intensive youth supervision order, I’ve placed her on a new rung and I’ve told her that my deal with her still stands. I have to add, we have last Thursday, with the family services, really set up a program that she now has a mentor, she has people who will look after her, she will go to school. In other words, we have given now about all the opportunities that we can for her to go forward instead of laying around and doing nothing. Also I’ve made it very clear to her that people do care about her, and that people do love her, inclusive of myself.
Damien Carrick: And you’ve told her that if she doesn’t re-offend in a particular amount of time in the future, then you’ll take her on that holiday to Belgium?
Antoine Bloemen: I’ve told her that if she doesn’t offender for a certain time, that then, together with my wife, she will be my guest, like my daughter, and go with us to my little village in Belgium.
Damien Carrick: This isn’t the first time that you’ve offered incentives or gifts to offenders to stop offending. I understand back in ’97 you said to a young 13-year-old boy Be good for three months and don’t re-offend, and I’ll buy you a bike. And you did.
Antoine Bloemen: I did, and he never came back to court. My understanding now is, and I try to follow it closely, that he now is employed full-time at a mining company and is doing quite well. What you have to understand, Damien, I am not rewarding crime, I’ve followed the law as I have to, I’ve taken a note, and punishment, I don’t like the word ‘punishment’, but punishment is being given. Thereafter I’m trying to let the person, particularly the young person who had never yet, and many people in the Eastern States and Western Australia don’t understand the young people we’re dealing with; they never had a dream, and I would not survive without a dream. Today I dream every day. I also have my feet on the ground. I mean I’m a strong believer that our hats should be the clothes, but our feet should touch the ground. In other words, that you stay with reality. But you’ve got to dream in life, you’ve got to have something to look forward to.
Damien Carrick: Another recipient of Antoine Bloemen’s generosity is Paul Tex.
Some time back, Tex, an adult, committed multiple driving offences, including driving under the influence and driving without a licence.
Magistrate Bloemen decided to put him on bail for six months before sentencing. One of the bail conditions was that Tex must report to the Halls Creek Arts Centre and create 8 paintings. And out of his own pocket, Bloemen bought Tex the paint and the canvases. The paintings, which I’m told are quite good, now hang in the Broome Court
Tex has only re-offended once in two years, a result which Bloemen regards as excellent.
Moira Rayner is a lawyer and Children’s Rights Advocate, who works in both Western Australia and Victoria. She says Antoine Bloemen’s unconventional approach does raise questions.
Moira Rayner: From what I’ve read there are couple of issues which come up to me fairly strongly. One is, and I need to say clearly without wishing to be misunderstood, that this fine, good human being happens to be a magistrate, which is a position of great authority in a small community, but it’s really a judicial position, or at least quasi judicial, and it involves applying and interpreting and applying the law in the community. So the issue that comes up for me immediately is the delineation of roles between a magistrate who is basically a State judicial officer dealing with the complex and community issues, and a person who as a decent human being, is trying to do something particular for offending children, who’s not actually trained in that, is not resourced to do that, and is doing it off his own bat, and it does raise issues for me about whether it’s effective, whether it’s appropriate, whether he’s supported enough, whether he can continue to do it, and whether it’s actually going to make a difference in the lives of that particular child or those particular children, or the community.
Damien Carrick: Certainly he says that there have been cases which have been very successful and the case of the young boy who stole the bike, he hasn’t offended now for many, many years.
Moira Rayner: I know, and I agree with him in the principle, absolutely right, but if you give most children a second chance, and time and opportunities, they will not continue to offend. But what it says to me is that there are no sentencing alternatives, or programs to address alternative ways of dealing with offending children, that it’s left to the discretion of an individual magistrate. Let us assume that Mr Bloemen comes to Perth and is run over by a bus and we send up Judge Jeffreys instead, all the good he’s done for those individual children may well live on, but there’s been no change in a structure which provides no sentencing or other alternatives to prevent children from offending or reoffending, than those which he devises from the Bench.
That’s another issue too, for me, you see, I think it’s wonderful he does it, and for some children it’s very successful, but it’s pure damned good luck that they happen to get this man at this time and he had this idea. When we actually have a lot of criminological evidence that offending children can be prevented from offending or continuing to, they can have what resilience they have preserved if there’s a whole range of alternatives, before they get anywhere near a courtroom, and there’s no evidence that what he’s doing is being used as a model, that I’m aware of anyway, to provide these range of programs, it’s just him.
Damien Carrick: Do you have any concerns about a judicial officer, a magistrate, taking on the role of a social workers, a father figure, a psychologist, there do seem to be elements of all those kind of roles in his interaction with some of these young people.
Moira Rayner: Well I do think it’s a paternal sort of a role he’s taken, and for all the right human reasons. But I do see problems in it because of that, you’re not actually in an ongoing relationship with these children for their lives, because you are an instrument of the State. You could be moved on at any time. You are just one element at this time of crisis in their lives. I think the blurring of roles is something that needs to be very carefully thought about, and that’s why I think it’s so hard for an individual to do this on their own, without some risk of slipping into an inappropriate role. Having said that, I’m not actually saying it is inappropriate, I haven’t seen it, I’ve only read about it and heard what he’s been saying and doing, and I am very much aware from my 32 years of legal practice, how often magistrates particularly, get familiar with their clients, and form a sort of slightly different relationship with them because they see them so often, and they are part of their community, and I know we’re all human. That’s why it’s so important to be very clear about what your role actually is and the limits of what your role can actually be, and if you are seriously trying to use your sentencing discretions and your administrative judicial discretions and running a course and making decisions in a benevolent way, which I do think human beings should do, there nonetheless need to be rules and limits so we don’t spill over from one to another.
Damien Carrick: Moira Rayner, lawyer and Children’s Rights Advocate.
Magistrate Bloemen rejects the idea that he’s entering into some kind of judicial grey zone. He says he’s just trying to find constructive ways of dealing with young, mostly indigenous offenders.
Antoine Bloemen: Well those people know very well that I’m a judicial officer and will always carry myself as a judicial officer. On the other hand, I think there’s nothing wrong by showing that you are also a human being and that you understand their background, that you don’t approve of it in any way, and let them know that there are other ways in life. I believe, and I may sound a little bit on the opposite here, I believe I’ve developed a relatively good relationship, respect with the people in the Kimberley and the Pilbara, and I believe that’s what counts. Most people appearing before me know that I can just as well be tough and show my teeth, as well as show other human matters.
Damien Carrick: Is that sustainable for somebody like you in that role?
Antoine Bloemen: Well Damien, I’m an old man of 62-1/2, I’ve got a few years to go. The day that I feel I cannot carry it, is the day I will quit. I will not be unfair to the people and become an old grumpy man. I’m not stepping out the role of law. The traditional law in the legal sense, I’m trying to pull forward. I’m trying, if it has to, to bring it in the present time, not leave it behind. But yes, it is very tiring.
Damien Carrick: But is there a danger though, that by taking on this kind of mixed role for the people who appear before you, and if say to a young person that you’re disappointed with them, or what-have-you, if they re-offend, that will kind of affect them, not only on the strict legal basis, but that could affect them emotionally and what-have-you as well. People might say that you’re not necessarily qualified to enter into that wider psychologising of the people who appear before you.
Antoine Bloemen: I understand that argument. I don’t accept it. I have quite a bit of experience in life, and in my thinking, the most sensible thing in life is commonsense. Now the other point, some of the people I’ve done that to were at the moment truly lost. There was nothing more to be destroyed. The young person we had now, there’s nothing more to be destroyed. All we can do is pull up, not pull down. I’m very careful that I don’t do that I don’t give them advice and psychology, but I’m trying to show that the courts are there for the public, for society, but that the courts are also humane.
Damien Carrick: Can you understand why people listening to this would say you’re bribing somebody, you’re rewarding them for their offending. You’re saying to them, OK, you’ve offended and here’s a present if you stop offending in the future.
Antoine Bloemen: No, Damien, I’m not rewarding them, not at all. Before I tell them what I will or can do, I sentence them. I do the law as I have to, in accordance with my oath. But thereafter, if in some cases I say, Look, if you do that, so I’m not rewarding, I’m hanging a carrot before them. But most of us have a carrot hanging before us. I perform, or attempt to perform a good job, for two reasons: one, it gives me tremendous inner satisfaction; and secondly, I get a reasonably good pay cheque. If you take the pay cheque away, the carrot there, maybe I wouldn’t do it. So we all have a carrot hanging before us. So I’m not rewarding crime in any way, I’m just trying to show them that there are other ways, and more rewarding ways, so I’m not bribing at all, I’m trying to say, Look, there are different ways. And maybe I’m trying to be a human, and if that is what is wrong, I would really feel sorry for our society.
Damien Carrick: Broome Magistrate, Antoine Bloemen.
Guests on this program:
Antoine Bloemen
Broome Magistrate
Moira Rayner
Lawyer and Children's Rights Advocate
Presenter: Damien Carrick
Producer: Maria Tickle