Australia incarcerates its Aboriginal youth at the world’s highest rates, it imprisons one in 14 Western Australian Aboriginal adult males and it removes one in 14 children from Western Australian Aboriginal families into the care of the State, and for Aboriginal peoples the whole of the Northern Territory is a prison built brick by brick by the Commonwealth, and this prison is loosely known as the ‘Intervention’.
Since 1992, the rate of Aboriginal incarceration in Australia has grown 14 times faster than that of non-Aboriginal incarceration.
In 2007 I wrote about the rates of incarceration of Aboriginal people worldwide following Masters’ research into international imprisonment rates. I had collated these rates and subjected them to various comparisons. Despite the self-evident maltreatment of Aboriginal peoples in this country, and the general knowledge that Aboriginal peoples are imprisoned at rates disproportionate to non-Aboriginal Australians, it did very much surprise me to find that Australia imprisoned its Aboriginal peoples at rates much worse than that of the last years of Apartheid South Africa.
Australia’s imprisoning of Aboriginal people is the world’s highest rate. But what rammed it all home for me of what I have always observed as a strongly held racism in this country was my discovery that Australia was imprisoning Aboriginal adult males at five times the rate South Africa was imprisoning its black adult males towards the end of Apartheid. In Western Australia this figure jacked to eight times the rate – what the hell is going on?
Six years on after reading the various Australian Bureau of Statistics data on imprisonment rates we note that rates of imprisonment have got worse, especially for Aboriginal peoples, who continue to bare the brunt of Australia’s growing prison population. Once again I decided to compare incarceration rates with other countries, and for instance see where South Africa is today – 20 years after Apartheid, and where Australia is not only 20 years on but in reality 60 years on after promising to dismantle its own Apartheid practices. I also compared data with the runaway leader in the jailing of people, the United States.
In 1992, the imprisonment rate of South Africa’s black males was 850 per 100,000 of the total population. In Australia, twenty years later we are imprisoning Aboriginal males at more than 4,500 per 100,000. Where six years ago I argued that we were imprisoning Aboriginal adult males at five times the South African Apartheid rate, it is now approaching six times that rate.
The Northern Territory Aboriginal peoples comprise 84 per cent of the prison population. They are the most incarcerated peoples in the world in terms of proportion to the total Northern Territory population. Aboriginal people make up nearly 28 per cent of the Northern Territory population. But Western Australia incarcerates its Aboriginal people at the world’s highest rate. Western Australian Aboriginal peoples make up more than 40 per cent of the Western Australian prison population but comprise less than 2.6 per cent of the State population.
Once again, we note that one in 14 Western Australian Aboriginal adult males languish in one of the State’s 14 prisons. In the period of my life where I was involved in the tertiary sector I visited some of these prisons, at the invitation of various prison officials, and met with the prisoners to discuss post release opportunities. The queues for personal advancement opportunities in our jails are long – the illiteracy rates are high. Aboriginal prisoners cry out for opportunity but there is limited opportunity and often it feels like there is no opportunity. The letters I have received from prisoners would break anyone’s heart as they seek the promise of someone to bring on some hope. What opportunities do exist are quickly taken up, the limited positions filled without time to consider them. The maximum security prison of Casuarina forever remains etched in my mind – half its prisoners are Aboriginal, about 300 of them, and the hopelessness and dejection was evident on their faces. For each one I may have assisted into education and employment rest assured there are hundreds who have not been assisted, who remain alone either unto themselves or to the (brother/sister) hood.
Australia has one of the world’s worst prison suicide averages – and all in all, in total no less than 70 prison deaths per annum. But its post release suicide/deaths average during the first year is horrific – at least five times the prison deaths average. 350 to 500 die post release – suicide or by various self-harm including addiction to various substances. It has been my observation that in general people come out of prison worse than they went in.
Western Australia, was, and remains the worst offender in the world in terms of the incarceration rate of Aboriginal peoples. Whereas the Aboriginal imprisonment rate nationally was five times higher than that of the last years of Apartheid South Africa, and now moving to six times the rate, in Western Australia the incarceration rate of Aboriginal adult males was eight times that of the incarceration rate of black South African males and is now moving to nine times the rate.
How can this be so in a country such as Australia, the world’s twelfth largest economy?
I have decided to write again, and again, about these rates so it sinks into the consciousness of many more Australians what exactly is happening here in Australia – racism. I have often been gentle to Australia that racism has its myriad veils and layers and that we are caught up in these but in the end racism is just that, racism.
Every Australian jurisdiction has an Aboriginal imprisonment rate worse than that of the last years of Apartheid South Africa.
The United States imprisons people at the highest rate in the world but Australia imprisons its Aboriginal people at a rate more than two and a half times that of the United States.
The Americans are imprisoning their people at about 740 per 100,000 while Australia imprisons Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at nearly 2,000 per 100,000 of the total population.
Australia’s June 30, 2012 imprisonment rate was at 168 per 100,000 but for its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples it was at 1,914 per 100,000. As a researcher who follows the trends I can assure it has risen since then.
The rate is increasing year by year, and the exponential increase in the rates is nightmarish as Australian Governments inept in having addressed Aboriginal impoverishment and despair hide their failures by legislating tougher sentencing laws, including mandatory detention laws and three strike laws, which indeed are prescribed to target Aboriginal peoples.
In 2002, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the rate of Aboriginal incarceration was 1,262 per 100,000 but in 2012 this had been jacked up by nearly 700 more Aboriginal people, while the total national incarceration rate was at 168 per 100,000.
So Australia incarcerates Aboriginal people at higher rates than the United States rate of 740, the Russian rate of 570, the Chinese rate of 120 per 100,000. But South Africa’s rate today, with its myriad social problems as it continues to unravel the effects of Apartheid two decades later, rests at 310 per 100,000.
South Africa is not happy with its large prison population – the African continent’s largest at 160,000 plus, but indeed their prison population has reduced in the last five years. In 2008, the South African incarceration rate was 348 per 100,000. In that time Australia’s has risen, with the brunt borne by Aboriginal peoples. In 2005, the South African prison population was 180,000, therefore the troubled country of South Africa is reducing its prison population post-Apartheid.
The United States during the last decade reduced its juvenile prison populations whereas Australia has not. In that same time the United States has stagnated and marginally reduced its adult prison population whereas Australia has continued skyrocketing its prison population (once again the rises due to Aboriginal peoples incarcerated in increasing numbers).
From 1993 to 2013, Australia doubled its prison population. In 2013 more than one in four of Australia’s prisoners are Aboriginal.
The jail occupancy of Australia is well over more than 100 per cent. Australian prisons are full. Officially they are at nearly 110 per cent occupancy, and therefore this leads to cramming and double bunking, but in real terms when we consider the numbers the prisons were originally designed for the occupancy rate is at 200 per cent thereabouts.
All these figures are startling because firstly every nation except Australia that I have referred to is reducing its incarceration rates, prison populations, its incarceration rates of their minorities – for instance blacks and First Nations people. On the other hand, Australia has been increasing its imprisonment rates of Aboriginal people, adults and juveniles.
If Australia is imprisoning its Aboriginal adult males at nearly six times the rate of the last years of Apartheid South Africa, and if Western Australia is imprisoning its Aboriginal adult males at nearly nine times the rate, then where are the real questions at the parliamentary levels? If the United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did during Apartheid, and Australia has an Aboriginal imprisonment rate more than two and a half times that of the United States incarceration rate then what does this suggest about Australia’s treatment and attitudes to Aboriginal peoples, who are less than 3 per cent of our total population? Furthermore, the point has to be hammered home, that if Australia incarcerates its Aboriginal people at rates higher than what the mother of all incarcerators, the United States does, then what does this really say about Australia?
Australia incarcerates its Aboriginal peoples at rates higher than what the United States does its black people, its Hispanic people, its First Nation peoples.
In the United States Hispanic males are incarcerated at 1,750 per 100,000, blacks at 4,350 per 100,000 and white Americans at 680 per 100,000. In Australia, the total national incarceration rate is at 168 per 100,000, but for Aboriginal people it is at nearly 2,000 per 100,000. For Aboriginal adult males it is slightly higher than the imprisonment rate of American blacks. Australia, unlike the United States, has not had a historical or contemporary bent on imprisoning its people, with the exception of Aboriginal peoples. In Australia, there is only a bent on imprisoning Aboriginal people, this is a fact, a dirty, obnoxious truth but it is the light of day truth.
According to the United Nations Development Program’s Human Index, Australia is ranked number two in the world, out of 187 nations, for its social and public health.
Australia, the world’s twelfth largest economy, has no excuse for not improving the lives of a few hundred thousand Aboriginal people. The Native Title Act has cheated Aboriginal communities of their rights, the resources sectors (multinationals and domestics) have ripped off blind Aboriginal peoples, the Government has neglected Aboriginal peoples by refusing to provide the full suite of infrastructure and other various equity to Aboriginal townships and communities and most of the rest of the nation turns a blind eye while its consciousness continues to be damaged.
I should not have had to skew two Masters and a PhD into researching why Aboriginal incarceration rates are on the rise in this country, but then again Australia forced me into it – during my youth it did its best to hide from me the true history of this nation. It hid its nefarious treatment of Aboriginal peoples, it shoved stereotypes down our throats, prejudices and biases that are still wreaking carnage to this day. Australia continues to deny its racist identity, its racist ideologies, its racist origins-of-thinking, its pernicious attitudes and it does so at the expense of humanity – in this instance Aboriginal humanity.
There have been hundreds of reports and inquiries during the last two decades into Aboriginal neglect, impoverishment and incarceration rates. The fact remains Australia has never prioritised addressing its greatest crime.
We can argue all we like about statistics but in the end when the statistics are so stark, their impost tells the truth – Australia remains a racist nation.
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Appalling statistics. I know they are true, but it is also true that there are programs and people who are working against this avalanche of misery. Would it be possible to investigate what they are & whatTHEY NEED to expand their success?
I think it is necessary to provide hope that we can all work towards great outcomes.
I think of HALO, but there are other groups out here.
That isn’t to minimise the seriousness & horror of the present prison situation, we just need to believe there are other ways to get what we want.
You are correct Jane, HALO does great work and is an example of one of the ways forward. There need to be more opportunities like HALO. Lee-Anne Smith sold her home to start up HALO, it should be governments funding more of what needs to be done. Sisters Inside in Queensland had crucial funding cut, and similarly so some other vital initiatives. However HALO is an example of what can work.
The Federal Australian Government released 500million dollars to prisons $50 million to diversionary programs. So this means we are locking up more indigenous people then we are talking to them. Why are the Aboriginal people being incarcerated for crimes white Australians would simple get a warning for while our black brothers are incarcerated? Shame Australia shame on all of us!
Nonsense!
Hi Pat, can you point exactly to what you consider the ‘nonsense’ to be and put us on the spot to respond please? Gerry.
Troubling statistics….rendered less powerful by being diluted by the wild claim that Australia does not have a history of imprisoning people??!! I guess the small matterof Australia being FOUNDED as a penal colony wasn’t worth mentioning? Someone has lost the plot!
Pathetic article about total irrelavent statistics. Two different countries, in population size, political structure and different eras… its like comparing apples to freakin marshmallows. Absolute waste of time.
Paul, you don’t think that Australia having a worse incarceration rate of adult Aboriginal males than South African Black adult males in the last years of Apartheid is not a startling statistic and indictment? I am presuming that you’ve skimmed through the article rather than read it because I cannot understand how that comparison did not disturb you.
It’s the whole point of the article that yes even the much maligned Apartheid South Africa with a totalitarian political structure discriminating against the majority of its population had lower incarceration rates than Australia has of its Aboriginal males.
Comparative data is crucial to research and in terms of findings.
Paul, South Africa has a population of 53 million and Australia 23 million but that is inconsequential when the rates are proportional.
This article is shows a discracefully hidden adjenda the government don’t let to light. Paul who are you to say this is irrelevent BUD wot if it was your people wot would be your answer then huh.
Thank u Gerry, too deadly!
I was under the assumption that people only get incarcerated if they are found guilty of a crime. As the old saying goes… If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
Prisons are too full and over-populated… What is the solution Gerry…? Shall we bump up the level of crime that needs to be committed before imprisonment occurs? That way those that commit “lesser crimes” get off with a warning and stay among the law abiding populace. Spend millions, perhaps billions building new jails? Shall we reward those that do wrong by the community by giving them their own private cell, a comfy bed, gymnasium and 3 meals a day? As a law abiding citizen and a tax payer, both of these are unappealing.
Perhaps the issue here is a cultural difference with “respect for the law”.
As with your “Australia is a racist country” comment, I have to agree, though I need to add that this is a two sided coin. Racism exists on both sides. It is not until mutual respect is shown that this issue will resolve.
It is great to see that you do your homework with statistics, though I am disappointed that you find it easy to pointing the finger without offering any suggestions in solving this issue.
These figures are a sobering reminder of the inequalities that still exist in virtually every country on this planet. The first reaction of most individuals is to deny the facts and to try to rationalize this injustice by suggesting that there is no link between crime and socioeconomic conditions. The fact is that poverty and lack of opportunity creates the kinds of conditions that lead to increased crime rates. This is pretty evident in the USA, which is considered to be the bastion of freedom and equality. As a white South African who grew up during the Apartheid Era, I have to say that we used the same arguments and reasoning to justify many of our heinous actions. I have come to realize that if you do not look after everyone in your community you end up ruining the entire country. South Africa, like Australia, is a great country, but it could have been so much greater had the country taken care of all of its people.
Dear Mr. Georgatos,
Thank you for the interesting article highlighting the sad truth of imprisonment and institutional racism of Australia’s indiginous people. However, to compare yourselves to South Africa at the end of Apartheid and not comment at all on the current state of affairs in South Africa is to look at the problem with blinders on. South Africa today has descended into one of the most lawless and dangerous countries in the world. There are more murders and rapes every day than most other countries count in a year. I am not saying that impisonment under apartheid was right. It was certainly unjust. But to imply that Australia’s problem is somehow worse than South Africa’s is just missing the greater context of the health and welfare, safety and economic prosperity of a nation.
I was a little confused with your statistic toward the end of the article where you cite that 4,350 out of 100,000 blacks are imprisoned in America while the stat for Aboriginal people is just 2,000 per 100,000. Surely if this is correct there is a far worse problem in America than in Australia.
Whatever the actual figures, there is a problem indeed as there still is in America and as there still is in South Africa. The only way to change the alarming numbers is to provide windows of opportunity and education to those groups who are more likely to go to prison than to college. I am part of a foundation in the US that was started 30 years ago that specifically provides college and university scholarships for students of color (minorities). We do not just hand them money, we provide training, internships and most importantly a mentor. 90% of our students graduate from college compared to about 60% of the general population or only about 40% of the population for black and hispanics. When one black or hispanic student comes home from college, he or she changes the trajectory for the whole family. He gets a good job, she raises her family to expect to go to college and thus the cycle of poverty and crime is broken. If education is the door to opportunity, don’t hide the key to the door from anyone. Better yet, start a program that gives a key to those who are most underrepresented in the boardrooms and universities. When all have the opportunity to have a seat at the table, justice and human rights will prevail.
Thanks Corey. With South Africa, we have written a couple of articles including this one: http://thestringer.com.au/south-africas-tragic-deaths-in-custody-record-and-the-international-silence/#.UmvGIPmno8I
Yes, you are correct about the difficult conditions in South Africa and horrific rates of impoverishment, homelessness and imprisonment.
I agree with you about education as a way forward, however as you write getting everybody with a seat at the table is imperative, however in order to do this we need a radical overhaul of how society disburses opportunity – and this should be the way. I praise all that you do, I do similar things but I also acknowledge that despite the number of peoples we help, there is a great divide out there, and it is widening, we are being outpaced, but that is no reason to stop. Every soul saved is a soul saved.
On the 2000 verse 4000 statistic, let me re-read the article and find the reference, however where I was referring to the US statistic outdone by the Australian statistic – it was in reference to adult Aboriginal males verse adult American Black males imprisoned.
Much respect, Gerry
Until you look into the reasons WHY any group are being incarcerated, these numbers simply mean nothing. Are they all innocent and bring picked up off the streets for being black or are they committing crimes? Perhaps including some of that research into your article will help to paint a more realistic picture, but then again, you probably wouldn’t want to because it would make your “message” far less effective.
I find what you have written a rather painful and one sided argument.
Though your statement:
“We can argue all we like about statistics but in the end when the statistics are so stark, their impost tells the truth – Australia remains a racist nation.”
is true in relation to the statistical data you have presented, your argument is malinformed and to compare the Australian prison system to the South African prison system in relation to Apartheid is misguided.
If you at statistics comparing white and black peoples incarceration in Australia according to crime it is instantly evident that though incarceration in black Indigenous Australian males is statisticly higher then that of White Australian males, White Australian males typically are charged with much longer sentences.
It must also be noted that a large amount of Indigenous Australian males are incarcerated due to petty crimes such as assult, robbery, breaking and entering and other misconduct; where as White Australian males more commonly get fines or community service rather then prison sentences.
There are multiple arguments for this one of which being because of the large amount of Indigenous peoples in Australian prisons it means that family or relatives are already in prison and this has been used as an argument to continue tohe current rate of Indigenous incarceration in Australia.
It can also be noted that not only in Australia but in nearly all countries, people who are convicted of petty crimes and are sent to jail are statistically more likely to become repeat offenders.
I think it is an unrealisic assesment to compare Australia’s judicary system to South Africa’s as they are both very different with different goals. South Africa is trying to decrease the amount of people they have incarcerated while Australia does not seem to have this issue. Both countries have different populations, social values, laws, etc… and I think it is both unfair and uninformed to compare them in such a standard way without taking in any other factors.
Bringing up Apartheid is also an irrelevant feature in this topic as Australia has only very recently stopped enforcing its own racist policies. The White Australia policy was only scrapped in 1979 due to need of immigration in Australi to expand the population.
I think you need to do more detailed reserch into your arguments before you profess such a strong view as to not be mal-informed.
Interesting article highlighting the plight of Aborigines.
I have visited the outback and spoken to white Australians and Aborigines.
Case in point: Aborigines do not want a pub in their town but white people find ways to work the bureaucracy and get one. The aborigines that take to drink become drunk and harm their own people. They land in jail.
There is racism against aborigines, I know.
The solution is to purge the bureaucracy and the police of prejudice against aborigines and the double- standards in enforcing the law. There is no insitutional racism in the laws but enforcement is a different thing.
Apartheid is obvious covert racism is not. I should know becuase I am a victim too.
if people break the law they will be punished.end of story. as for racism,its a problem going both ways. forget jails,they are as highly regulated an enviroment as you will find. pop out to any number of aboriginal settelments,or even the Alice,on a friday night and see how your white ass gets treated.
Im so SICK & TIRED of people of “colour” being labelled victims. Everywhere they go theyve are opressed then marginalised then end up poor and in jail. How can it always be the white mans fault?
Yes, victimisation continues. The en masse victimisation – inequality – continues because of various neglect and racism, be it racism by neglect, racism by omission, racism by continued disenfranchisement. This all started by a historical manifest and hence exploitation of divides, and which permeated the fabric of western civilisation with en masse slavery, forced labour, dispossession. Yes, my friend, there are indeed victims and therefore perpetrators. With en masse victims they are predominately the culmination of the contextually very recent historical divides, disenfranchisement, exploitation, and other cruelty. When you impoverish peoples, when you disenfranchise them then there will culminate the predicaments that we see in for instance South Africa, right throughout the Africas, in parts of Asia and parts of the Americas, in Australia etc. It is a recent historical fact that western civilisation rapaciously mauled many peoples throughout our world, smashed the local peoples and degenerated many of their descendants to the modernist predicament of shanty towns. Till various redress arises the majority of the descendants of those disenfranchised will languish in inequality, and therefore continue vulnerable to myriad inequalities and abuse.
Kindly, Gerry