A CULTURE of overcharging and overpolicing of Aboriginal people in Victoria is clogging the state's courts and jail remand centres.
Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Wayne Muir is calling for a review of police practice following the release of a Sentencing Council of Victoria report.
The report revealed Aboriginal people were more likely to be sentenced to prison and less likely to be handed intensive correction orders as an alternative to jail.
The report, released last week, found that in 2010-11, and after controlling for factors including previous criminal history and offence type, almost 37 per cent of Kooris sentenced in Victorian magistrates courts received prison sentences, compared with 28.5 per cent of non-Koori offenders.
The report is one of several published across state jurisdictions in recent months that suggest a pattern of harsher sentencing of Aboriginal offenders, a trend disputed among criminologists and researchers.
Mr Muir said the Sentencing Council's report confirmed what his service -- which is contracted by the state's Attorney-General's Department to provide legal aid to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders -- had observed in practice.
"I think there may be a number of contributing factors (to the higher jailing rate)," Mr Muir said.
"Those contributing factors are a number of things including what we think may be a degree of overpolicing.
"It's the 'build more prisons and lock them up' approach."
A national Senate inquiry last week began hearings in Perth into the concept of justice reinvestment following the widespread concern at the spiralling rates of overrepresentation of Aboriginal prisoners.
Nationally, Aboriginal adults are jailed at 14 times the rate of non-indigenous people, and for juveniles at 31 times the non-indigenous rate.
At the same time, the High Court will next month consider a special leave application by NSW Aboriginal man William Bugmy, whose lawyers are petitioning the nation's highest court to rule that Aboriginality and social disadvantage should be taken into account as an explicit factor in sentencing.
Mr Muir said in Victoria, police were failing to use their discretionary powers in many cases when dealing with petty crimes such as small-scale shoplifting and riding a bicycle without a helmet or without a bell -- offences that usually involved juveniles.
As well, Aboriginal clients were often unnecessarily saddled with multiple offences, particularly in incidents involving assault, Mr Muir said.
"They are generally loaded up with a number of charges with a view to it being a bit of a negotiating tactic to convince people that, 'If you don't agree to one charge, we're going to hit you with all of them'.
The severity of the charges can be out of all proportion to the alleged offence.
"We often refer to a lot of the charges that our clients get as 'a hamburger with the lot'. The idea is that there are a whole lot of things that are in there, but by the time it gets to court it's either a plain hamburger or none at all."
Mr Muir said he disagreed with the assessment published in The Australian last week of Arie Freiberg, who said he did not believe entrenched prejudice or discrimination was a factor in the sentencing process.
"I'm cautious because, again, no one has done the necessary work to provide the definitive answer," Mr Muir said.
"But it does raise your suspicions (in relation to overcharging and overpolicing) that there may well be some racial tendencies at play."
A spokesman for Victoria Police said the service had a number of diversion programs in place for first offenders, and it always took a fair and professional approach when policing the community.
"Our key focus is on crime, not specific cultural groups," the spokesman said.