Justice Reinvestment: Creating Alternative Pathways for Incarcerated Indigenous Youth

By Ruth Skilbeck

Last week saw the launch of the landmark Senate Inquiry into 'justice reinvestment' that gives the opportunity for submissions from the public towards reforming the criminal justice system in Australia. Australian Research Council government funded-research has shown the criminal justice system is highly costly, inefficient and severely inequitable towards Indigenous people including youth, mothers and people with mental health disorders and cognitive disabilities including brain injury and hearing disability, a cohort who have been disproportionately represented, and routinely imprisoned for crimes in the lowest 10% of severity (which includes debt), in lifetime patterns of recidivism - that are costing the State more than if the money was reinvested from 'criminal justice' into community health and wellbeing, aimed to prevent crime.

Current research conducted by international critical criminologist Professor Eileen Baldry and her team at the University of New South Wales, in the ARC funded project  'People with mental health disorders and cognitive disability in the criminal justice system in NSW' in partnership with Justice Health NSW, Corrective Services NSW, NSW Housing and NSW Council on Intellectual Disability has revealed sobering information about how vulnerable people, and Indigenous people are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system in New South Wales.

The research project took a new approach. It "aimed to create human service and criminal justice life course histories" that -anonymously- describes individual and group experiences - by creating "life-courses human service and criminal justice histories." The researchers tracked the life courses of individuals as they appeared in official administrative state records. The data was cleansed to preserve anonymity.   The team's research showed that once a young person entered the juvenile justice system at an early age, of approximately age 15 for Indigenous youth, that the same person was highly likely to return and reappear in the criminal justice system records throughout their entire life.

"The pathway analysis is suggesting that many in this group with complex needs [poor education, homelessness, cognitive disability, mental health disorder, substance abuse]...may have from an early age begun cycling in a liminal, marginal physical and personal space connected with social control agencies."

The research found that, many in these groups with complex needs  "become locked, early in their lives, into cycling around in a liminal, marginalized community/criminal justice space...a space that is neither fully in the community or fully in the prison. They do not fall through cracks, they are directed into the criminal justice conveyor belt." (Baldry et al, p. 15).

Over the past thirty years numbers in prison have escalated, and now the Australian government is seeking new solutions.

Justice Reinvestment is a new concept and approach to preventing crime, and increasing safety in society, that has proven to be effective in communities in Canada and the US. How it works is by reinvesting money from the criminal justice system into measures to prevent crime by investing in the community to prevent young people from entering the juvenile justice system, and criminal justice system.

Very recently, a new campaign has sprung up to call for justice reinvestment for Aboriginal young people, to break the cycle of imprisonment and recidivism and create social change in New South Wales.

The Justice Reinvestment for Aboriginal Young People Campaign aims to reverse "the shameful over-representation of Aboriginal young people in the juvenile justice system". The campaign is based on some sobering facts: 2.2 per cent of NSW population is Aboriginal yet Aboriginal people make up 50% of the prison population. Aboriginal youth make up 5% of the NSW prison population and 28 times more likely to be placed in juvenile detention than non-Indigenous young people. 

And this is highly costly in monetary as well as social terms: to supervise and care for a young person in juvenile detention costs the State approximately  $652 per day, or $237,980 annually (2011 figures). 

The Campaign calls for a new approach- by creating alternatives pathways that are more fulfilling, through education and creative arts, and community health and wellbeing programs- and through mentoring support. A new approach of community consultation, based on priorities and needs, that would benefit everyone in the community regardless of their involvement in the criminal justice system.

"There are already some highly effective community leadership and mentoring programs that are making a real difference by positively engaging Aboriginal young people who are at risk of offending. These initiatives are not just more cost effective than locking young people up; they are helping create community cohesion, positive role models, hope and opportunities for a better future for young people."

The campaign is run by the Sydney-based Justice Reinvestment for Aboriginal Young People Working Group and already has some very influential supporters such as the Governor of New South Wales Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, AO CVO; Mr Mick Gooda, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission; Dr Tom Calma, National Coordinator of Tackling Aboriginal Smoking; Professor Chris Cunneen, from The Cairns Institute, at James Cook University and former Chairperson of the NSW Juvenile Justice Advisory Council, and many more.

The group is calling on the NSW Government to commit to a justice reinvestment policy and seeks to establish a Justice Reinvestment Advisory Group that would oversee the changes, the redirection of resources into community, and monitor the level of Aboriginal young people in detention over the next 5-10 years.

Around the world governments are trying out new solutions to mass incarceration, as the old solution, a relic of the colonial age, has been proven to be unsustainable, and to not work, and now the Australian government is considering alternatives beginning with the senate inquiry into "Value of a justice reinvestment approach to criminal justice in Australia."

© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck December 4, 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 5^th 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

Australia’s Prison System Fails the Families of ‘Stolen Generations’

By Ruth Skilbeck

Australian incarceration figures have more than tripled in the past three decades, the group at highest risk of imprisonment now is Indigenous women (the vast majority of whom are mothers) and in recent years Indigenous mothers many with traumatic mental health and cognitive disorders – often as result of violence – have been 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 Indigenous rate of imprisonment is now 14 time higher than the non-indigenous rate, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics (2010). 

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 their 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 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 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.


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  3 December,  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 5^th 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.