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Blow-out in Aboriginal imprisonment numbers rises to 83pc

Amanda O'Brien

27 November 2009 - GOVERNMENTS across Australia are "failing miserably" to tackle Aboriginal imprisonment, resulting in a blow-out in prisoner numbers not seen for decades, according to Western Australia's Chief Justice Wayne Martin.

Releasing figures showing an 83 per cent rise in the number of sentenced Aboriginal prisoners in Western Australia in 18 months -- which was double the rise for non- indigenous prisoners -- Chief Justice Martin said a "dramatic worsening" was under way.

Figures for Aboriginal remandees in prison were also startling, with a 67 per cent rise since June last year, compared with 7 per cent for non-Aborigines.

"This extraordinary increase in Aboriginal imprisonment is not unique to Western Australia," Chief Justice Martin told a criminology conference in Perth this week.

Citing a recent study by Jacqueline Fitzgerald for the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, he said the number of indigenous prisoners across Australia rose 50 per cent between 2001 and last year, to reach almost 6700.

His comments coincided with federal parliament agreeing to conduct an inquiry into the jailing rates for indigenous juveniles and young adults. The chair of the House of Representatives standing committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Bob Debus, said the inquiry would look at prevention and early intervention measures, as he described the number of indigenous Australians in jail as "deeply disturbing".

Chief Justice Martin admitted his judicial colleagues were partly to blame for the shift as they jailed more people for longer, spurred on by the public and politicians demanding tougher sentences.

He said the overall prison population in Western Australia had jumped 27 per cent, or by 1000 people, in the past 18 months.

"To put this in context, over the seven years between mid-2001 and mid-2008, the prison population increased by 19 per cent." Chief Justice Martin echoed concerns by the state opposition about the number of vulnerable people being caught in the net.

"The majority of the prison intake over recent times has been fine defaulters and those who have been convicted of offences at the lower end of the spectrum. A significant proportion of the intake have psychiatric or intellectual disability issues, and, of course, a very significant proportion of the intake is Aboriginal."

Chief Justice Martin told the Australian and New Zealand Criminology Society conference that the human and financial cost was huge.

With many prisons at bursting point, he said four new medium-sized prisons were needed to adequately house an extra 1000 prisoners, costing more than $600million, while the additional recurrent cost of keeping them in jail was about $100m a year: "It is open to question whether a properly informed public would accept that hospitals and schools should forego resources so we can incarcerate increasing numbers of offenders who commit less serious crimes and who are socially, economically and psychiatrically disadvantaged."

He said the prospects of rehabilitation for minor offenders in jail were not good.

"About 40 per cent of male adult non-Aboriginal prisoners leaving prison in WA between July 1998 and June 2008 had returned to prison before early May 2009, and for Aboriginal prisoners the equivalent figure was just under 70 per cent," he said.

Source: The Australian

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