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Aborigines rediscover their past in desert jail

22 August 2004 - When Dale Walsh, a 23-year-old Aborigine, was jailed for theft he expected to be incarcerated in a grim urban prison run by whites. Instead he was sent to Australia’s first “outback jail”, an Aboriginal prison run by Aborigines, where the boundary is the desert and the inmates sleep in dormitories or under the stars. They also move about unrestrained by razor wire, searchlights, locks or electric fences.

Welcome to Yetta Dhinnakkal — “the right pathway” — an experimental jail deep in the gnarled scrub and desert 500 miles northwest of Sydney with a lofty ambition: to rehabilitate offenders and reduce a black incarceration rate that is 17 times higher than among whites.

Yetta, set on a 26,000-acre former sheep farm near Brewarrina, was opened four years ago on the recommendation of the 1990s Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which sought ways to reverse both the high crime rate in Aboriginal communities and the large number of indigenous deaths in prison.

Figures released last week attest to Yetta’s success, overturning the assumption of most white Australians that Aboriginal rehabilitation does not work. While 40% of inmates at ordinary prisons tended to commit another crime within two years of being released, only 20% of Yetta’s inmates reoffend, according to the analysis.

“It’s a hell of a lot better here than the normal system,” said Clarrie Dries, its governor, himself an Aboriginal. “In our jail, inmates have got to protect their own backs. Here you can be yourself.”

The jail’s location was chosen to re-acquaint young Aboriginal offenders with the environment and traditions of the past, in the hope of restoring a sense of pride to their sense of identity.

The emphasis is on education rather than punishment. Inmates are taken by tribal elders on hunting expeditions, during which they track traditional “bush tucker”, such as lizards, snakes and wallabies. They learn how to cook witchetty grubs, concoct bush medicines and make boomerangs and axes.

The jail currently has 70 inmates, selected according to rigid criteria: those convicted of sexual crimes or armed, violent offences are not admitted.

Walsh, a former heroin addict and petty thief, is typical. “When I first came in here, I was lost,” he said. “I didn’t know who I was. Here they give you more freedom, but you’re pressured to be responsible for your actions."

Source: The Sunday Times (UK)

related links :

• DCS - Brewarrina (Yetta Dhinnakkal) Centre

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