Last week, the federal government helped launch a paper entitled Bridges and Barriers: Addressing Indigenous Incarceration and Health . It was prepared by the National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee (NIDAC) and calls for new efforts to improve Indigenous health, and thereby reduce Indigenous incarceration.
The report had some startling findings, and in the context of the ongoing Mulrunji Doomadgee outrage, and the horrendous death in custody in Western Australia of Mr Ward — a respected young Aboriginal leader who was cooked in the back of a prison van during a four hour trip through the Central Desert — I had expected media to get at least half as ‘excited’ about the issue as they do when reports emerge of Aboriginal children being sexually abused.
How naïve. Perhaps it’s because ‘black on black violence’ is more palatable to the Australian public. Or maybe it’s just because our media (and by inference the Australian public) gets its rocks off on child s-xual abuse. Whatever the reason, black men and women being jailed at astronomical rates apparently doesn’t pique our interest.
The story got a sparing run across the nation, and was restricted in most cases to a breaking news story on websites, courtesy of an AAP yarn.
It included some startling statistics like: “One in four prisoners in Australia is Indigenous and their over-representation in the jail system is only getting worse.” One in four is no mean feat given that in the general population, Indigenous Australians make up one in 40.
And there was this: “The situation is worst in the Northern Territory, where 83 per cent of the prison population is Indigenous.” That’s 83 per cent in a jurisdiction where Aboriginal people constitute less than 30 per cent of the total population.
“In Western Australia, the figure is 41 per cent . Victoria has the lowest proportion of Aboriginal prisoners — 6 per cent of that state’s inmates are black.”
All pretty alarming stuff, but not enough to really capture our attention. So I thought I should try and ‘s-x’ it all up a little bit. All I can do is put the figures in some sort of context that might resonate a little better…. Which of course required me to read more than the government press release hand out.
In the first half of 2008, there were 8,411 Indigenous people enrolled in tertiary education . At the same time, there were 6,605 Indigenous people in prison.
By comparison, for the same period there were about 696,279 non-Indigenous Australians enrolled in tertiary education, while there were 20,072 non-Indigenous Australians in prison.
You can do the math … or I can do it for you. If you applied the same principle to white Australia — ie. the number of people in jail is only about 22 percent lower than the number at university — our total prison population would expand to over 546,000 people. That’s a population larger than Newcastle, Australia’s seventh largest city.
Nowhere else on earth would you see figures where the Indigenous population in jail almost matches the Indigenous population in university. Indeed, Australia’s Indigenous jailing rate is the highest on earth. But that’s not the most startling ‘figure in context’. This one is:
The jailing rate of black males in South Africa at the end of the Apartheid era (1993) was 851 per 100,000 population. In Australia today, we jail black males at a national rate of 4,364 per 100,000.
That’s over five times higher.
In the Northern Territory, the rate is almost six times higher. In fact, no state or territory of Australia — not even the ACT — jails black males at a rate less than South Africa under apartheid. The closest is Tasmania, at 1,169 per 100,000 population.
So Australia’s ‘best performer’ is still almost 30 percent worse than the regime considered the most racist on earth.
Our worst performer — Western Australia — jails black males at more than eight times the rate of South Africa during Apartheid.
There is no doubt the many issues impacting the Aboriginal community are a massive cause for concern, and something that any intelligent Australian should be determined to resolve.
So what’s the answer. We seem to have tried many approaches – from throwing large amounts of cash at the problems, to acting like concerned parents with naughty kids.
The incarceration statistics couldn’t be clearer in confirming the absolute tragedy that is life for the majority of indigenous Australians. There would be uproar if another section of the community was incarcerated at such a rate – Chinese, Lebanese, Italians.
Most people would agree that aborigines face life hurdles that whites can’t even imagine. The extreme difficulties of employment, alcoholism, sexual and domestic abuse, and a general ostracism from “regular” Australia culture and life.
So what is the answer? Should the law not apply to aborigines? Surely not. Are all incarcerated aborigines victims of false confessions and police brutality? Surely not. While the mindset and actions of many police towards aborigines are disgraceful (Hurley and subsequent trials, results, treatment etc the perfect example) , at what point do aborigines need to take some responsibility for themselves.
The white man won’t give an aborigine a job as they consider them drunks, and the aborigine drinks because the white man won’t give him a a job and so has no future. It’s a vicious circle that will continue until one side or the other changes something. Based on history it’s unlikely to be the white man that changes.
Unfortunately the reality is that our grandkids will be discussing the same issues and proposed solutions that we are. There is simply no political or public will in this country to resolve the various issues destroying aboriginal communities.
Why is there this constant lamenting of the rate of Indigenous incarceration but no useful suggestions as to how that rate can be reduced? Is it ok to simply not gaol someone even if they fit the criteria for a term of imprisonment only because they are black? No. The same way it isn’t ok to spare a white person of a gaol term for the same reason.
With the exception of the NT, which has the most racist of mandatory sentencing laws – hence the appalling incarceration rate of Indigenous people – there is little to suggest that Aboriginal people are gaoled because of skin colour. In fact, where black on black violence occurs, the sentence is likely to be more lenient than any other racial mix of defendant and victim (check out the Aus Institute of Criminology figures on this).
Where are the suggestions about diverting Aboriginal people away from criminal actions in the first place? Where are the hand-wringers when talk turns to banning alcohol, to putting some responsibility on Aboriginal parents for their children, to policies aimed at turning around the welfare-dependancy so many Indigenous people grow up with and adopt readily? When people have hope for the future and a sense of self-worth they’re less likely to screw up their lives and go to gaol.
It’s all very well the write an article condemning us all for not jumping up and down about the huge over-representation of Aboriginal people in gaols, but I really don’t think it’s surprising enough to warrant the jumping. It’s awful, abhorrent and shameful. But the stats aren’t helping….people go to gaol for breaking the law. Let’s start with why they’re doing that instead of blaming the courts for doing what they’re supposed to.
It appears that black males in Australia are eight times more likely to engage in criminal behaviour than black males in South Africa under Apartheid. I have a solution, let’s decriminalize theft, malicious damage and assaults of any kind as long as the perpetrator is black and the statistics could be easily reversed.
Hang on a bit Nadia. Which bit about Mr Ward’ death in the back of an unairconditioned van was deserved. When John Elliott was drunk and stroppy outside the Carlton Football club AND driving a car AND insulting a police officer- he was not put in a van and cooked to death while being carted off to prison. He went home that night. You see white men do things and go home – black men do things and get locked up or killed.
It is time when really owned up to the dicrimination in this country instead of breast beating and blaming the victims. Indigenous Australians like asylum seekers get a lower tier of justice to the rest of us.
I would be interested in how many victims of the crimes for which aboriginal people were incarceratd were themselves aboriginal. In which case, would not incarcerating the person actually be doing aboriginal people in general a favour. I don’t think incarceration rates mean anything unless the sentencing is discriminatory, which it would be if aboriginal people were being locked up for things other sections of the community were let free for. Is there any widespread evidence for this?