Dr Brian Steels

Restorative Justice Week is approaching and WA’s highly respected prison reform advocate and academic, Dr Brian Steels is calling for Governments to comprehend restorative justice principles if they want to be serious about reducing the rising prison population.

Restorative Justice Week will be commemorated November 17 to 24, with Dr Steels hosting a Restorative Justice gathering on November 18 at Perth’s Curtin University Centre for Aboriginal Studies. Dr Steels said that without a redemptive restorative justice approach to sentencing then Australia will just continue to double its prison populations every decade. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples bear a disproportionate burden.

“For restorative practice, policies and philosophy to flourish within Australia, they are required to move from the margins to mainstream thought,” said Dr Steels.

“No longer seen as ‘alternative’ within many international jurisdictions, restorative and transformative practices, including problem solving or therapeutic courts, circles, conferencing and other forms of restorative justice are fast becoming the norm.”

Dr Steels said that what he and the Asia Pacific Forum for Restorative Justice and the Institute for Restorative Justice and Penal Reform want is for restorative justice to be recognised “as the preferred method of providing a fair and just process and outcomes to victims, perpetrators and communities.”

He said international evidence demonstrated and especially for those with serious offences that restorative justice “brought about significant personal transformation and healing.”

“Victims have a far better chance at moving into recovery and improving their mental health outcomes through restorative practices, whilst offenders are challenged to transform their lives away from crime, and to positively contribute to families and communities,” said Dr Steels.

“Prisons, when used as a last resort, can be transformed into wholly restorative and transformative environments, where policies and practices produce alternative regimes to violence and aggression. Within these environments, prisoners, their families, victims of crime and community members can engage in meaningful ways to address criminal behaviour whilst providing a glimpse of life in harmony with the self and others.”

“Town and city councils and shires can help provide restorative justice practice among their community safety regimes, as well as building local therapeutic communities, where rehabilitation can take place in a supportive environment… where personal knowledge of the self and others is encouraged and re-connections to families, communities, people and places are developed in culturally and gender valued and sustainable ways.”

Australia’s total prison population comprises 26 per cent Aboriginal peoples, one of the world’s worst rates, the Northern Territory has 84 per cent of its prison population comprised of Aboriginal peoples, the world’s worst proportional rate, and WA incarcerates Aboriginal peoples proportion to total population at the world’s worst base rate – at 9 times what Apartheid South Africa did of its Black peoples.

The Law Council of Australia has stated that the rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait imprisonment have become “unacceptable.” The Council has suggested that Territory and State Governments are failing their duties to address these rates. Australia’s Bar Association president, Michael Colbran QC said ATSI peoples comprise 26 per cent of the nation’s prison population, whereas in 1991 this was 14 per cent.

“While there are some promising programs such as bail hostels in some States, these programs have only had minimal impact because of countervailing policies such as mandatory sentencing.”

“This is an unacceptable situation and one Australia cannot continue to ignore.”

Law Council of Australia president Duncan McConnel who is also a member of the Council’s Indigenous Legal Issues Committee said that in 22 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody there have been no reductions in ATSI imprisonment rates, but rather that they have skyrocketed. He pointed to the fact that between 2000 to 2010, ATSI imprisonment has increased by more than 50 per cent.

“The disparity in imprisonment for Indigenous and non-Indigenous juveniles and women is significantly greater, with worrying consequences for entire communities.”

Chair of the Victorian Bar, Fiona McLeod SC said, “Disturbingly the rate of increase in Indigenous incarceration is growing fastest among Indigenous women and children. There is an urgent need to act on this issue.”

Ms McLeod commended the Koori Court which operates in Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Dr Steels said that “the penal estate has to come to an end” for ATSI peoples and for all Australians – that we have to work alongside people, not send minor offenders to prison, and to support community-driven programs, build restorative practices that consummate healing and individual’s and where applicable a community’s or society’s progress, and work with people post-release and not abandon them. ATSI issues have to be understood, as the majority of them are the result of a harsh colonialism that disenfranchised people from their normal settings and disengaged them into multiple continuing traumas.