Increased Indigenous incarceration since Royal Commission
Two decades on since the Royal commission into Deaths in Custody, have we given Indigenous youth a chance? Image: alimander
Government report recommends re-establishing Indigenous bodies to improve shocking incarceration rates. Ashleigh Berdebes reports.
A House of Representatives report, released in June, calls it a “shameful state of affairs” that Indigenous youth are currently 28 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous juveniles.
The situation has only worsened in the 20 years since Government accepted the previous Royal Commission’s recommendations, with the incarceration rate for Indigenous Australians increasing by 66 per cent between 2000 and 2009.
Recommendations such as cross-cultural training for police, arrest and gaoling (as a matter of last resort), and an advisory body to liaise with police and Government regarding Indigenous justice were also present in 1991’s Royal Commission report and have reappeared 20 years later in the current one.
Ray Jackson, President of the Indigenous Social Justice Association, says Doing Time – Time for Doing: Indigenous Youth in the Criminal Justice System is just “reinventing the wheel”.
“If one has a look at the recommendations that are in the report, one can quite easily refer those recommendations back to the 1991 Royal Commission that handed down 339 recommendations.”
The Federal Government recently accepted all of the report’s 40 recommendations to minimise incarceration, recidivism and the overrepresentation of Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system, who represent 53% of Australia’s juvenile inmates.
Ray Jackson says, “The major problem with all of these reports is the recommendations appertaining to the police are totally ignored.”
“The police will not accept any of the recommendations that change their everyday work practices, and they will continue just to do what they do every day, which is focus in on Aboriginal kids and continue to churn them through the courts.”
With 58% of Indigenous offenders being re-imprisoned within 10 years, the Law Council of Australia suggests that “‘therapeutic’ or restorative justice mechanisms” such as “Aboriginal sentencing courts, youth courts, drug and alcohol courts… have been demonstrated to have a greater impact on recidivism, particularly among young people.”
Constructive proposals in the Commission’s report include finding accommodation for those let out on bail, hearing tests for all pre-schoolers, providing pre-natal and ante-natal support for Indigenous mothers, diagnosing and officially recognising Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder as a disability, creating school attendance incentive programs, and providing teacher development and defense force recruitment.
The Federal Government has also promised to act on the recommendation of the creation of an Indigenous Law and Justice Advisory Body, a mediating force between youth and the criminal justice system, strikingly similar to one which Ray Jackson was a chairman of in the early 1990s, following the first Royal Commission.
When being asked what happened to the previous Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council, or, AJAC, Ray Jackson says “well, the police didn’t like it, because we used to question the police on their methods, and we questioned the government on their methods.”
“The major problem was, at each monthly meeting, we would have a different Copper with a different rank… they just stumbled through the whole thing, they just filibustered, in a sense. And we were bought to a screeching halt.
“We couldn’t do anything, nothing was happening.”
In response, Aboriginal members of AJAC decided to abandon the Government offices and take the meetings to Aboriginal members of the public, in places like La Perouse, Liverpool, and Mount Druitt. During this time, AJAC was dismantled by the Government.
“The Coppers didn’t like it, the government didn’t like it, so they shut us down.”
The justice system – including police and juvenile justice, is the responsibility of the each State and Territory Government, making the extensive reform of Indigenous justice practises that the Commission recommends difficult to monitor and more vulnerable to bureaucratic neglect.
Ray Jackson believes that if anything is to be achieved following this report, the Government needs to do away with self-regulation, and that an oversight body needs to be established that includes community representatives.
The accountability for implementing these recommendations needs to be sufficiently regulated; responsibility must be allocated, enforced, and audited on a long-term basis to have any effect on the incarceration rates for Indigenous youth and intergenerational disadvantage and discrimination in general.
“They have to have equal involvement and power to the government bodies, and the departmental bodies.
“It’s no use going to meetings and they just politely hear to what you’ve got to say and you walk out and it’s all over… It’s forgotten.”
“I don’t have any great belief that the government really wants an Aboriginal advisory body that’s going to tell them like it is, they want a tame cat body who will come along and mumble a few words and have a few beers and a canapé or something and that’s it!
“Well, we want more than that.”
Excellent article.
Barbara Karpinski
[Reply]
F R E E D O M F O R O Z E A N S (+PLOT)(+ANAYA)
SCENE I.
Contour of Australia seen from space in black, surrounded by blue, with distinguished white boundaries of most strong clans, still approximately 80.
Music: classical of Ozeans performed with didgeridoos.
Voices: inarticulate, laud, joyous, coming from within the boundaries blinked at this occasion, thus making a cacophony of sounds and blinking sparks.
Narrative: IT WAS THE LAND OF OZEANS BEFORE 1788.
SCENE II
Contour of Australia in white with boundaries of 80 clans in black. From within these islands of clans heard weak, undistinguished, voices in languages of the clans.
At the left, lower side of the continent an island with the name NOONGAR
On the right, East side, an island marked CONGRESS OF OZEANS.
Music: from low tones to high contemporary of white settlers, laud and bombasting.
Narrative: IT IS THE LAND OF OZEANS ON THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION.
SCENE III.
Continent of Australia covered by the 80 clans with boundaries in the shape of QUADRATES.
Within each quadrate it is seen a TOTEM specific to each clan. On its left side name NOONGAR. At its right name CONGRESS with its EMBLEM.
Music: soft, reconciliatory, specific to Ozeans and Settlers, over their continent surrounded by colors BLACK, EYELLOW AND RED.
Narrative: IT IS THE LAND OF THE FIRST PEOPLE, RIGHT NOW IN 2011.
SCENE IV.
From the quadrate NOONGAR, does departure a charter bus with a Presidential Candidate and en route from the first quadrate to the last one he or she collects TOTEMS, as a sign of appreciation of the Candidate’s drive for presidency. It might be not excluded, that from another quadrate departs second Candidate in a competition to the Noongar’s one. One or both of them will finish the presidential tour in the CONGRESS.
Music: embalming tones of the Australia’s and First People’s anthems.
Narrative: PRESIDENCY DRIVE FOR OZEANS, VICTORIOUSLY ENDED.
SCENE V.
Continent of Australia seen from space, in a mosaic of colors resembling colors of Australia and OZEANS, glimpses of their flags, and the QUADRATES, each surrounded by palms of hands joyously waving. The silhouette of CONGRESS within filled with waving hands.
Music: performed by didgeridoogists. Plenty of them.
Narrative: WE, THE FIRST PEOPLE, IN OUR OWN CONGRESS ARE NOW ASSEMBLED
SCENE VI
Into the Chamber of Congress enters the winner of the presidential ride and is vigorously applauded by Delegates from each QUADRATE. And all in a solemn mood needle small TOTEMS at the edge of the Flag of the First People of Australia, so let it be known, across the world, that OZEANS have been united by the 80 clans into ONE NATION.
Music: responding to the Clan of the Winner.
Narrative – WE, THE PEOPLE OF OTHER CLANS, DO BLESS OUR PRESIDENT AND THE AMENDED NATIONAL FLAG
SCENE VII
In this Scene are seen TOTEMIZED QUADRATES heading into direction of the not yet having status of an Australian State, the NORTHERN TERRITORY in order to establish there a SOVEREIGN UNITED NATION OF OZEANS.
Music – Anthem of the United Nations Organization
Narrative – ALL NATIONS ON EARTH PLAYS TO THE TUNE OF THE UNITED NATION OF OZEANS. DREAMS OF OUR ANCESTORS HAVE BEEN FULFILLED. WE CAME FROM THE DOO WARAMBOOL, A PLACE IN THE MILKY WAY. FROM THE MILKY WAY, HOME OF THE PLANET EARTH.
Author: w_czajkowski@yahoo.com
A PLOT FOR EXTINCTION OF NATIVES OF AUSTRALIA
On the ground of Helping yourself: Marlo Morgan and the fabrication of indigenous wisdom, an analysis
by Cath Ellis of Australian Literary Studies, October 2004, it becomes a necessity to summarize Ellis’
attempt to enroll the author of Mutant Message Down Under, HarperCollins,1994 into a row of
extraordinary liars.
It is more than amazing that “tons” of ink has been spilled to denigrate good intention of Morgan, showing
to the civilized world remnants of prehistoric culture, 100,000 years old.
The analysis creates an impression as if it has been made with a purpose of putting the culture into a dust,
even not allowing to spare a trace of existence of a tiniest nomad tribe, the Real People, in the midst of
a desert, because hundreds of other tribes gained a just place in the welfare system of Australia,
which enabled them to a successful competition with the rest of population, 22 million strong.
Nevertheless the analysis becomes a witness to Morgan’s gargantuan effort in defense of her intention,
making it visible, almost to the entire world, alluding that the Aborigines cannot be pushed into a margin of
Australia’s society and blended in with other minorities accepting rules set forth by the continent
discoverer, Captain Cook, and his continuators from the mighty England. In other words, putting Aborigines
on the same wagon with others rolling over and trampling their land.
Therefore to the small pack of Real People, as well as to their creator, Morgan, there is no need
to pay any attention.
Morgan’s a try to expose wisdom of savages, as they are meant by whitefellas, cannot be tolerated, as tries
to do another fantasying author of Carpentaria, Alexis Wright of Waanyi tribe of Queensland in 2009,
having a gut to call the fellas in biblical term “claypans”.
A serious approach to Morgan’s lies and fantasies of Wright could cause uproar among Aborigines proud
of their origin, not corresponding to God’s vision of a human being. Such an uproar could intensify their
ambitions to become free and independent.
Such a scenario cannot be taken into account, therefore Aborigines must live with their Dreams of being
closer to Nature than the God’s claypans. No other way around.
Thee gargantuan effort of Morgan pretty soon will be put on the same table with Wright one, for
her fictitious scenery of imaginary Aborigines is of larger dimension than that of Morgan.
Then the whitefellas might tell, the continent, the terra nullus, belongs to us instead of admitting, that the
Mutant Message and Carpentaria present the real face of Australia, awakening masses that beyond
promises a welfare bliss lurks Aborigines extinction.
Wieslaw Czajkowski, aka Doo Warambool, May 2010
w_czajkowski@yahoo.com
aka Ted Pioro tttt_pioro@yahoo.com
_______________________________________________________________________
25 May 2012
Dear Wieslaw Czajkowski,
Allow me to acknowledge and thank you for the information that you have provided me by email dated 20 May 2012 regarding Australian Aboriginal peoples.
I and my support staff rely on the important and timely information provided to us by indigenous peoples, non-governmental organizations and other sources. Your information is crucial to the effective functioning of my mandate, assisting me greatly in my communications and consultations with United Nations Member States. Your information will be given close and careful consideration. After an initial review of your submission, I or my support staff may request from you additional or clarifying information.
There are a number of possibilities available regarding how information that reaches me is used and what actions may be taken based upon it.
In urgent situations requiring immediate action, a communication may be sent to the State in question, for example requesting it to take appropriate action to ensure the security of individuals or communities. In a situation of a less urgent nature, a communication to the State might raise more general concerns regarding indigenous issues, legislation or policy, or might request information or a response from the State regarding specific allegations.
Other actions may also result from your information, which may include consideration of offers of assistance or technical cooperation in my capacity as Special Rapporteur to address ongoing and entrenched problems relating to indigenous issues.
I must stress to you, however, that ordinarily all communications with States undertaken by my mandate and support staff remain strictly confidential until they are reported to the Human Rights Council. We hope you understand that it is therefore not usually possible to update you on actions resulting from your correspondence. Also, please be aware that not all information submitted to me results in specific action. Rest assured, in any event, that your engagement allows me to have a fuller understanding of human rights situations of indigenous peoples, and helps to enable appropriate and considered responses.
To know more about the communications procedure of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, please consult the web page: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/rapporteur/submit.htm or http://www.unsr.jamesanaya.org/comm/submitting-information-to-the-special-rapporteur
Yours sincerely,
Mr. James Anaya
Special Rapporteur on the rights
of indigenous peoples
[Reply]
PUSH ANAYA harder!!!!
[Reply]
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