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conferences lack specific time frames, they are restricted to minor non-scheduledoffences by first offenders, there are no legal safeguards for the young person and thepolice have control over who is referred to the teams (ALSWA submission 127 page 348,Beresford and Omaji 1996 pages 103-5).Indigenous young people are not being referred as frequently to Juvenile JusticeTeams for conferences as non-Indigenous youth. ‘Only a small percentage of Aboriginalyoung people are being referred to the Teams and … this percentage is graduallydecreasing’ (WA Government submission Exhibit 19 Appendix 4; see also Crime Research Centre1995 page 6).In NSW the Attorney-General’s Department has recommended that the pilotCommunity Youth Conferencing scheme be abandoned partly because of attitudinalproblems on the part of police and lack of referrals of Indigenous youth to theconferences. A new system is proposed called ‘accountability conferences’. It is proposedthat referrals could be made by the court and the Director of Public Prosecutions as wellas by the police. It is also proposed that there should be a presumption in favour ofconferencing for a greater number of offences (NSW Attorney-General’s Department 1996pages xii-xiv).In Tasmania the draft Youth Justice Bill proposes that referrals be made by the court.In SA Indigenous young people are less likely to be referred by police to theconferences and more likely to be referred to court. Indigenous young people comprise12% of referrals to conferences but 19% of referrals to court. In addition Indigenousyoung people (36%) are almost twice as likely as non-Indigenous youth (19%) to bereferred straight to court without the benefit of either a conference or a police caution(Dodson 1996 page 33, Wundersitz 1996 page 204).In Queensland recent amendments to the Juvenile Justice Act 1992 establish‘community conferences’ as an option. Only police officers are authorised to makereferrals to a community conference as an alternative to court, although the court canrefer a matter to a conference after a hearing where guilt has been determined.The problems associated with the police role in the conferencing process show howdifferent the systems developed in Australia are from the original New Zealand model.There were significant reforms to policing practices in New Zealand at the same time asthe introduction of family group conferences. These reforms included stricter controls onpolice powers in relation to young people. The Australian variations have simply seenconferencing as expanding the options available to police. Blagg argues that ‘thesignificant dimension of the process from a Maori perspective was the degree to which itdid precisely the opposite and restricted police discretion’ (forthcoming page 7).The use of police in the conferencing process has particular significance forIndigenous communities given the history of removals and prior police intervention. Therole of police, combined with cultural differences and language difficulties, may causeIndigenous young people and their families to appear ‘un-cooperative’ (Dodson 1996