The Magistrate, Mr Greg Cavanagh, questioned the benefit of sending Jamie Wurramara to jail after finding him guilty of stealing the biscuits from the Gemco mine on Groote Eylandt on or about Christmas Day 1998.

The jail term was determined by the NT Government's mandatory sentencing laws, introduced in 1997, which demand 12 months in prison for anyone who commits a third property offence.

Mr Cavanagh questioned the value of sending Wurramara to jail, since he had been out of prison for only a few weeks when he stole the biscuits from the world's richest manganese mine. "You must wonder about the value of jail as a deterrent on this island," he told the court.

Wurramara's counsel, Mr Stewart O'Connell, replied: "My submission is it has no value; he certainly wasn't sitting down to his roast turkey lunch (that Christmas Day) when he did take his biscuits.

"He has not reoffended anyway since Christmas 1998."

A North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service spokesman, Mr John Sheldon, said he was "absolutely disgusted" that Wurramara would go to jail, estimating it would cost the taxpayer at least $150,000.

"This one simple offence of stealing a packet of biscuits will now cost Australian taxpayers $150,000 and that's a conservative figure," Mr Sheldon said. Wurramara's sentence follows the public outcry over the death in custody last week of 15-year-old Wurramarrba, also from Groote Eylandt, who was serving a 28-day sentence for stealing pens and paint.

The boy, whose first name is not being used because of Aboriginal custom, was found in his room with a sheet around his neck at the Don Dale Detention Centre near Darwin, 800 kilometres away from his home on this island.

The Northern Territory Government has denied any connection between its mandatory sentencing laws and the death.

Immediately after adjourning the court yesterday, Mr Cavanagh also announced he would step down as coroner for the inquest on the 15-year-old.

Mr O'Connell said Wurramara was devastated by his sentence but would cope with being in jail. "His feelings now are that he's devastated. He has been saying to me all day that he wanted to get a bond."

Mr Sheldon said a High Court appeal was unlikely but he repeated that the Aboriginal legal service planned to apply to the United Nations to have the NT mandatory sentencing laws repealed on the grounds that mandatory sentencing breaks the international convention on civil and political rights. The convention has rules against arbitrary imprisonment, he said. "Clearly this is arbitrary that one person got 90 days and another got one year," Mr Sheldon said.

Two people have already been jailed for stealing biscuits - one for 90 days because he was on a second property offence and another for one year because he was on a third property offence.

- AAP

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