The 16-year-old boy with an intellectual disability rode his bike without a helmet. On that single day, he was fined three times – twice by the same police officer – resulting in a $1047 debt to the state government, which he carried into adulthood.
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The Redfern Legal Centre, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the Aboriginal Legal Service said the 3600 fines issued to minors over two years during the COVID pandemic – to children as young as 10, worth up to $5000 – intensified and exposed a wider problem.
They commissioned a study by academics at the Universities of Wollongong, NSW and Technology Sydney, which found the COVID fines were disproportionately given to disadvantaged, Indigenous, cognitively impaired or at-risk minors, and to minors living in the parts of Sydney hardest hit by illness.
