Arresting Incarceration: Pathways Out of Indigenous Imprisonment - Softcover

Don Weatherburn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1922059552 ISBN 13: 9781922059550

Publisher: Aboriginal Studies Press (AUS), 2014

Synopsis

Despite sweeping reforms by the Keating government following the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the rate of Indigenous imprisonment has soared. What has gone wrong? In Arresting incarceration, Dr Don Weatherburn charts the events that led to royal Commission. He also argues that past efforts to reduce the number of Aboriginal Australians in prison have failed to adequately address the underlying causes of Indigenous involvement in violent crime; namely drug and alcohol abuse, child neglect and abuse, poor school performance and unemployment.

About this title

About the Author

Don Weatherburn has been the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research since 1988. He was awarded a Public Service Medal in 1998 and made a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2006. He is the author of two books and more than 180 articles, book chapters, and reports on crime and criminal justice.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Arresting Incarceration

Pathways Out of Indigenous Imprisonment

By Don Weatherburn

Aboriginal Studies Press

Copyright © 2014 Don Weatherburn
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-922059-55-0

Contents

List of tables and figures, 
List of abbreviations, 
Preface, 
Acknowledgments, 
Chapter 1: The problem of Indigenous over-representation in prison, 
Chapter 2: A short history of Indigenous imprisonment, 
Chapter 3: The Royal Commission and its aftermath, 
Chapter 4: The theory of systemic bias, 
Chapter 5: Theories of Indigenous offending, 
Chapter 6: Key risk factors for Indigenous offending, 
Chapter 7: Responding to Indigenous offending, 
Chapter 8: Social and economic reform, 
Chapter 9: Can we close the gap?, 
Notes, 
Reference List, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The problem of Indigenous over-representation in prison

In the beginning

Not long after the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Harbour, the local Cadigal people began harassing the new arrivals to get them out. The colonial authorities were so angered by this behaviour they resolved to kidnap and imprison some Aboriginal people in order to 'unveil their mysterious conduct' (Tench 1793). On 31 December 1788, two Navy lieutenants sailed down to Manly Cove where a number of Cadigal people had been seen standing on the beach. After enticing one of them closer with a few presents, they seized him and fastened him with ropes to the thwarts of the boat, whereupon he let out what one contemporary observer described as piercing and lamentable cries of distress (Tench 1793). Those cries of distress have continued ever since. Aboriginal people now make up about 2.5 per cent of the Australian adult population but account for 26 per cent of all adult Australian prisoners (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2012a). The rate of Indigenous imprisonment is nearly eighteen times that of non-Indigenous Australians — six times larger than the disparity between African-American and white imprisonment rates in the United States (Guerino, Harrison & Sabol 2011, p. 27).

This is not what Indigenous Australians were led to expect when former Prime Minister Paul Keating proclaimed in Federal Parliament that:

... there is no more central issue to our national identity and self-esteem than the injustices brought home to us all by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

So how did it come to this? Why, after all the hope and effort over the last twenty years, are rates of Indigenous imprisonment higher now than they've ever been? Opinions on the reason for this state of affairs are sharply divided, and the division is acrimonious. Some see the first unwarranted Indigenous detention on 31 December 1788 as emblematic of what followed. According to this view, the institutional racism that led to the first Indigenous detention by colonial authorities is alive and well today, albeit in more subtle forms; in the laws we frame, in the way we enforce them, in the institutions of justice and in the exercise of police and judicial discretion. Some share the view that colonialism is the root cause of Indigenous imprisonment but take a different tack on the transmission mechanism, arguing that colonisation and dispossession led to the destruction of Aboriginal society and that the resulting legacy of economic and social disadvantage inevitably fostered high rates of Indigenous offending and imprisonment. Some reject the historical explanation altogether, arguing that the antecedents of Indigenous imprisonment are to be found in contemporary events and

Edition details

• Publisher: Aboriginal Studies Press (AUS)
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1922059552
• ISBN 13: 9781922059550
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224