New approach towards indigenous justice called for in Australia
Updated
Researchers have told a new Parliamentary inquiry in Canberra that jailed young Aboriginal Australians are being dehabilitated rather than rehabilitated. A lack of alternatives to incarceration is being blamed for Aboriginals heavy over-representation in prison numbers. Only three percent of Australia's population is indigenous, but in 2005-06, 38 percent of the young Australians in jail were indigenous. The issue has festered for decades, and experts at the hearing are pleading for money to be diverted from prisons to more creative programs in an approach called 'justice reinvestment'.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Dr Jillian Guthrie, Research Fellow Indigenous Offender Health Research Capacity Building Group; Tom Calma, former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner; Professor Michael Levy, Chief Investigator Indigenous Offender Health Research Capacity Building Group; Mick Gooda, incoming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner
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MOTTRAM: When several Aboriginal boys, aged between eleven and fifteen, made their third or fourth appearance before West Australian magistrate Elizabeth Hamilton last year, she saw more than just a case for judgement. She saw the beginning of a potential journey into long term criminality and a desperate need for intervention. She sent the lads on an eight week camp that she knew was being run by a committed but unsalaried local near the town of Albany. They were involved in activities to redirect their energies and give them hope and a chance. The fate of those boys remains to be seen. But giving evidence to the Australian Parliament's standing committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Doctor Jillian Guthrie cited it as an example of what should be available to so many more young indigenous offenders and the law officers they may encounter.
GUTHRIE: I guess that's an example of what we would like to see as a demonstration site looking at justice reinvestment.
MOTTRAM: Doctor Guthrie is a member of a group working to address the profound health impact on indigenous Australians caused by their high rates of incarceration .. among the highest in the OECD. Doctor Guthrie is also a descendant of the Wiradjuri people of western New South Wales. The concept of justice reinvestment she mentioned has been gaining momentum, particularly with the interest of the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma. He has spent time in the U-S, where the idea was shaped in a bid to cut the ever burgeoning prison population and associated costs there.
CALMA: Instead of investing money in building new prison beds, let's take that money that we would have invested or some of it and put it back into the ocmmunity where people are coming from where crime is being committed and start to look at programs to develop up those communities, develop their capacity look at alternatives to sentencing procedures or the way the justice system is being interpretted locally, creating jobs etcetera to try and address the crime before it becomes crime.
MOTTRAM: The approach does not seek to replace prisons, but to broaden options. And where Tom Calma has left off in the Social Justice Commissioner's position, his successor, Mick Gooda, just four days into the job, has quickly taken up the cause and added his support.
GOODA: I think it means in a real sense a possibility for Aboriginal communities to take control of this and instead of the money being spent in the prison system it can be diverted to other areas like in communities for diversion programs away from prison.
MOTTRAM: The constant theme is the lack of options for law enforcement officers -- options that could be as simply as funding grandmothers to ensure children go to school. Professor Michael Levy is a director of corrections health in the Australian Capital Territory and who's on the same group as Doctor Guthrie.
LEVY: What the institutions provide is a port of last resort but unfortunately it's too readily available or by kind of a double-default, the magistrates and the police, their lack of alternatives.
MOTTRAM: Professor Levy also lamented the trend of draining resources and therefore skills away from Australia's remote communities, leaving them less capable of addressing their social issues and making the impact of incarceration long distances from home communities more acute. He and Doctor Guthrie agree some existing prison moneys should be diverted to trialling programs like the one in Albany, Western Australia, and a range of other ad hoc programs in other parts of the country .. but with proper goals and evaluation, and reliable funding. It should be overseen in a joint effort by the countries legal, educational, health and academic communities among others .. a national reference group on justice reinvestment, Jill Guthrie calls it.
Incoming Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda says it should even appeal to those who control the public purse.
GOODA: When you look at what the costs are of people confronting courts and being transported out of their communities and the cost to their community generally is almost prohibitive compared to what you can do if you resource communities to manage offenders in this way.
