home | news l

Indigenous prisoners over-represented and overlooked: ANCD

Samantha Donovan

25 June 2009 - A new report being released by the Australian National Council on Drugs has found that Indigenous people are over-represented in the prison system, but their drug and alcohol problems are not being treated effectively. The report recommends greater support to keep young Indigenous people in school and better access to diversion programs.

TONY EASTLEY: A new report being released today is urging the 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 13 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.

Samantha Donovan reports.

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.

TONY EASTLEY: Associate Professor Ted Wilkes, the chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs' Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee, ending Samantha Donovan's report.

Source: ABC

Education seen as key to keep indigenous kids out of jail

Stephen Lunn, Social affairs writer | June 25, 2009 Article from:  The Australian

EACH indigenous child should be given their own education fund to help keep them in school and avoid the path to prison.

Education, along with greater diversion of indigenous offenders with drug and alcohol problems from the justice system into the health system, are the keys to stemming the rising tide of Aboriginal incarceration in Australia, a report says.

The Australian National Council on Drugs report on indigenous incarceration, "Bridges and Barriers", will be launched in Canberra today by Health Minister Nicola Roxon.

Prepared by the council's National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee, it notes the proportion of Aborigines in detention has steadily grown since the 1991 report of the royal commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, despite efforts to cut it.

Almost one quarter of the prison population and more than half the 10 to 17-year- olds in juvenile detention are indigenous, despite Aborigines making up just 2 per cent of the population.

Indigenous adults are 13 times more likely to be in prison than other Australians, a situation the NIDAC report puts down to entrenched social disadvantage and cultural displacement, which has led to widespread alcohol and drug misuse.

"White justice doesn't work. It needs to be changed," said NIDAC chair Ted Wilkes, an associate professor at Curtin University's national drug research institute, and a Nyungar elder.

Mr Wilkes said the education proposal aimed at giving indigenous children a better start had not been costed. "We need these big ideas, and it is in line with the government's effort to close the gap (between indigenous and non-indigenous life expectancy)," he said.

"If we can start intervening now by giving children better access to education, the numbers in prison will diminish in the next generation. No question."

 Source: The Australian

Soaring jail rates justify change of tactics: report

Joel Gibson Aboriginal Affairs Reporter

25 June2009 - THE appalling rate of indigenous imprisonment, which has almost doubled since the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody, has led to renewed calls for radical changes in the handling of indigenous offenders.

Eighteen years after the Royal Commission, the number of indigenous women in prisons has more than tripled to make up one-third of all inmates, and more than half of the 10 to 17-year-olds in juvenile detention are indigenous.

Eighty-three per cent of the Northern Territory's inmates are indigenous, and in Western Australia it is 41 per cent. NSW, with 20 per cent, has the fourth highest proportion.

Drug and alcohol abuse is a major cause, according to the Australian National Council on Drugs, and more treatment programs for indigenous offenders are sorely needed.

A report to be released today by the council's National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee says jail rates are destroying indigenous communities and wasting public resources.

Almost seven in 10 indigenous adult detainees and up to 90 per cent of juvenile detainees in NSW test positive to drugs, but many are disqualified from diversion programs under present laws because they have alcohol issues or a history of violent offences.

The report, Bridges And Barriers: Addressing Indigenous Incarceration And Health, calls for increased investment in treatment such as residential rehabilitation, which costs less than half the $269-a-day that a jail inmate costs.

The committee's chairman, Associate Professor Ted Wilkes, said governments persisted with ineffective law and order policies in pursuit of votes and ignored the remnants of structural racism in Australia's justice systems.

"It's time to step back  and ask what all this [incarceration] is going to mean for indigenous people," he said.

The report recommends an education support fund for every young indigenous person, a relaxation of the eligibility criteria for treatment and indigenous-specific diversion programs.

It also calls for a national network of indigenous youth wellbeing centres, a drug and alcohol campaign directed at indigenous youth and a network of residential rehabilitation centres.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, has also called for a rethink on how to spend the $600 million-plus annual jail bill for indigenous prisoners.

Mr Calma wants Australia to adopt a US approach called "justice reinvestment", which diverts funds from prisons to preventative programs in communities with a high concentration of offenders.

In Sydney yesterday, 20 indigenous children from Brewarrina watched the South Sydney Rabbitohs train and learnt to surf courtesy of the No-Way anti-drugs campaign.

Its founder, Darren Marton, a former Cronulla Sharks rugby league player who beat a methamphetamine addiction after jail and hospital stints, said there were too few treatment programs for offenders.

"Governments cry poor and say there's not enough money, but if they got down and impacted on people's lives they wouldn't be spending so much money on putting people in jails," he said.

Source: SMH

See: Australian National Council on Drugs

Further information: health issues page - includes news index and external links