Indigenous prisoners over-represented and overlooked
Updated
A new report being released today is urging Australia's federal and state governments to drastically change the way indigenous people are treated in the criminal justice system.
The Australian National Council on Drugs found that indigenous Australians are thirteen times more likely to end up in jail than the rest of the population. But it says the justice system is failing to help indigenous offenders with drug and alcohol problems.
Presenter: Samantha Donovan
Speaker: Associate Professor Ted Wilkes, the Chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs' Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee; Gino Vumbaca, The Australian National Council on Drugs executive director
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SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The Australian National Council on Drugs report found a clear link between drug and alcohol abuse and the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in jail.
Gino Vumbaca is the council's executive director.
GINO VUMBACA: Almost a quarter of our male prisoners are Indigenous, almost a third of our female prisoners are Indigenous, and half of our juvenile detainees are Indigenous.
And we also a notice a fair proportion of Indigenous prisoners are actually intoxicated at the time of their offence and a lot of them actually attribute their offences to their dependence on alcohol and other drugs.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Gino Vumbaca says the report estimates that it costs taxpayers $269 a day to keep a person in jail whereas residential rehabilitation costs about $98 a day.
GINO VUMBACA: Invest in treatment. Treatment is a far better option and a far more effective option than building prison cells. Give Indigenous people the power and the opportunity to actually deal with their problems in a much more effective way, in a much more positive way.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Associate Professor Ted Wilkes is a member of Western Australia's Nyungar community and the chairman of the council's National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee.
TED WILKES: As an Aboriginal person, I would say that the system is broken. It's not working for Aboriginal Australians. It's been set up to look after the mainstream. Aboriginal people don't fit into the mainstream, we live on the margins and consequently this system needs major repairs.
We don't want these statistics and these incarceration rates around when our grandchildren turn into adults.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The report makes a number of recommendations, including the creation of educational support funds for every young Indigenous person as well as diversion programs specifically designed for Indigenous offenders.
Ted Wilkes says mainstream diversion programs to get offenders out of the criminal justice system and into healthcare are often unavailable to Indigenous people.
TED WILKES: If you've got a criminal record, you're out; things like you have to plead guilty if you're going to go to these diversion programs, most of the clients of Aboriginal Legal Service are encouraged to plead not guilty in the first instance; whether those sort of little things might have an impact.
We need to find out why our people aren't accessing the current diversion initiatives.
