By Ruth
Skilbeck
A Senate
Inquiry was launched last week into alternatives to Australia’s costly prison
system, which has been proven to be ineffective and counterproductive in ending
crimes.
Australia
is now spending $3 billion a year on keeping people in prisons. Figures have tripled in the past 3 decades, the highest risk group
of imprisonment now is Indigenous women, and in recent years Indigenous mothers
many with traumatic mental health and cognitive disorders – often as result of
violence – are increasingly imprisoned rather than treated in the health
system.
Since the start of the Northern Territory
Intervention in 2007 there has been a 70% increase in incarceration figures in
the Northern Territory in Australia.
The old
colonial-style policies of incarceration are not working as a deterrent to
crime and are causing more social problems and enormous costs to the State in
‘postcolonial’ decolonising societies around the world, of which Australia is a
prime example, according to current research conducted in Australia.
Over the
past 20 to 30 years the number of people imprisoned in Australia has tripled,
and the majority of these are from disadvantaged social background with a
disproportionate number of Indigenous people in prison, and amongst these a
disproportionate number of Indigenous women the majority of whom are mothers.
Even more
worryingly in recent years there has been an increasing rate of imprisonment of
Indigenous women with mental health and cognitive disorders- including brain injuries
resulting from violence. Rather than receiving effective health care they are
being incarcerated – and meanwhile the children of incarcerated mothers are
very often left to fend for themselves. A large percentage of the children of
incarcerated mothers end up in the juvenile justice system, thus perpetuating a
vicious cycle, which has been almost impossible for the majority of people from these
disadvantaged backgrounds to escape.
Australian Research Council funded research
conducted in Australia, led by Professor Eileen Baldry professor of criminology
at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, (Baldry, Dowse, Clarence 2012) shows that
once an indigenous person enters the juvenile justice system at an early age
the statistics show a very high chance that they will continue to be imprisoned
repeatedly throughout their entire lives
Even more
alarmingly the statistics in the new research show that almost all of the
children and youth who are picked up in the juvenile justice system had parents
who were affected by the ‘Stolen Generations’ policies, which saw the
separation of children from parents by the State in an attempt to assimilate
Aboriginal peoples under the white Australia policy that was in effect from
1909-1967. This only ended when Aboriginal people finally won the right to vote
after much voicing and protesting resistance and a referendum that showed the
majority of Australians wanted Aboriginal people to be equal citizens.
But the research into ‘lifecourse’ state records data
conducted by Professor Baldry’s team, the Australian Prison Project Group, at The
University of New South Wales shows that since then over 40 years later, equality
has not prevailed and very far from it, the ongoing social inequality is
reflected in the usually unseen underbelly of penalization figures- in which
Aboriginal peoples are disproportionately represented. In recent years mothers
have been the highest rising group, thus effectively constituting another form
of separation of Aboriginal and indigenous children from their mothers, and
fathers, and families.
What the research also shows is the enormous cost,
not only to quality of life of indigenous people and to the social fabric, but
in terms that government’s understand- monetary cost to the State. It costs $221
per day to keep a person in prison (the same cost as for an upmarket hotel room)
and Australia is now spending $3 billion
a year on keeping people in prison.
Many people in the research survey are imprisoned
for relatively minor crime, with short prison terms, often they are homeless
and there is a correlation of homelessness and return to prison according to
the research survey.
Around the world researchers now investigating the
policies of penalization, for minor crimes, in decolonizing countries, are
coming to the same results, they are unsustainable and do not work.
This is shown in Australia in repeat imprisonment throughout
peoples entire lives; and imprisonment does not equip people to live free from
the state after leaving prison, as the figures show that the majority continue
to return to prison. Yet prison, and custody, is not a safe place, as the
increasing numbers of deaths in custody of Indigenous peoples also shows.
This week a Senate Inquiry was launched into
Justice Reinvestment to look at alternatives to the current system, with a
focus on addressing the underlying social causes of crime and how to improve
rehabilitation through addressing disadvantage where it occurs in societies,
and work to counteracting the causes.
What emerges most starkly from the chilling body of
evidence in research papers, is the lack of humanity with which already
disadvantaged peoples have been- and continue to be- treated in this most unjust
penal system, and the urgent need for new approaches to tackle the social
problems and health issues, for which, clearly, prison is not a sustainable
solution.
New
creative and humane solutions are needed to address the complex problems
eventuating from the impacts of the 'Stolen Generations' policies as the old
'solution' of mass incarceration has been shown not to work.
©Copyright
Ruth Skilbeck 30 November 2012
Baldry, Eileen and Cunneen, Chris (2012)
‘Contemporary Penality in the Shadow of Colonial Patriarchy’ in Coventry, Garry
& Shincore, Mandy (Eds.). (2012) Proceedings of the 5th
Annual Australian and New Zealand Critical
Criminology Conference July 7 and 8, 2011. James
Cook University, Cairns Campus. Townsville, Queensland: James Cook University.
ISBN 978-0-9808572-4-5.
Baldry, Eileen, Dowse, Leanne, Clarence, Melissa
(2012) “People with Mental and Cognitive Disabilities: Pathways into Prison.” Background
Paper for Outlaws to Inclusion Conference, February 2012.
Senate Inquiry: Value of a justice reinvestment approach to criminal justice in Australia.
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