At Don Dale juvenile detention centre a 15-year-old orphaned Aboriginal boy took his life only days after being locked up for $90 worth of ‘crimes’. How many Australians know about Johnny Warramarrba? Johnny’s mother died when he was a baby. His dad was killed in a car accident when he was eleven. When he committed his less than $90 worth of ‘crimes’ – the stealing of pens and stationary – his grandmother was seriously ill in Darwin Hospital.
This young boy is one of many lives lost in and out of juvenile detention. In general our youth come out of juvenile detention in a worse state than they went in. Hopelessness is all their mind’s eye sees. That which the eye sees and the ear hears is despair and the fears that go with.
For every young life lost, thousands of others meander in broken lives and for many from broken lives to ruination. Johnny Warramarrba was found hanging in his cell. This was February 9, 2000. He had been arrested in his community for stealing goods worth less than $90. There was no counselling and he was not guided by any mentoring. Instead he was journeyed 800 kilometres to Darwin and jailed.
Five days before his pending release Johnny killed himself. Because he refused to wash up, a prison officer ordered him to his cell. He was found a little while later, hanging. He died nine hours later at Darwin Hospital.
The penal estate, in line with the criminal justice system, is a culture of punishment and therefore everyone who works within this culture soaks up and dishes out punishment.
In 2009, an Aboriginal boy aged 12 was arrested and jailed for being in possession of a piece of chocolate – a Freddo frog. He was charged for shoplifting from a Coles supermarket. He was locked up for stealing an item that would have sold for 70 cents.
The kid had no prior convictions. Should we be prosecuting children for these types of ‘crimes’?
Western Australia is the mother of jailers of the nation’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. One in six of the state’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have been to prison – this is an abomination and not only smacks of but is racialised imprisonment. It is also the world’s highest jailing rate. In fact, one in 13 of the state’s Aboriginal adult males is in jail.
Australia has the world’s highest rate of juvenile detention with the mother of all jailers, the United States of America, ranked second behind Australia. The juvenile detention rate gets worse, higher the more west we travel across the Australian continent, with the Northern Territory and Western Australia highest.
These children are screaming out for help and instead of listening to them we brutalise them; maltreating, abusing, degrading, diminishing, bashing, isolating them. What is with the 23 hour lockdowns? What is with the long-term separations from other detainees, from human contact?
In viewing the footage packaged in the Four Corners episode, “Australia’s Shame” what stood out for me was the boy who after being stripped naked by guards huddled with his head into his knees. The hurt is deep, damaging. It goes to the psychosocial, destroying prospects of a positive self, robbing one of all hope.
There is nothing as profoundly powerful as forgiveness. The forgiveness of others validates self-worth, builds bridges and positive futures. What is missing from the criminal justice system and the penal estate are the cultures of forgiveness and redemption. Forgiveness cultivated and understood keeps families and society solid as opposed to the corrosive anger that diminishes people into the darkest places, into effectively being mental unwell. Anger is a warning sign to becoming unwell. Love comes more natural to the human heart despite that hate can take one over. In the battle between love and hate, one will choose love more easily when in understanding of the endless dark place that is hate and of its corrosive impacts.
Hate can never achieve what love ever so easily can. Hate and anger have filled our prison and juvenile detention centres with the mentally unwell, with the most vulnerable, with the poor – and not with the criminally minded.
Like so many others, I have worked to turn around the lives of as many people in jail as I possibly could, but for every inmate or former inmate that people like me dedicate time to in order to improve their lot – ultimately there is a tsunami of poverty related issues and draconian laws that flood ‘offenders’ into prisons. Jailing the poorest, most vulnerable, the mentally unwell, in my experience, only serves to elevate the risk of reoffending, of normalising disordered and broken lives of digging deeper divides between people, of marginalising people. It has been my experience that in general people come out of prison worse than when they went in.
Of course violence breeds violence, hate breeds hate but yet we jail and punish like there is no tomorrow.
One of society’s major failures is the punitive criminal justice system. Despite an evidently failed penal estate we continue on with it. For too many it has become easier to lie and act as if the failure is a success or as if there are not alternatives. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the Brothers Karamazov, wrote, “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect ceases to love.”
Johnny Warramarrba’s mother died when he was a baby. His dad was killed in a car accident when he was eleven. When he committed his less than $90 worth of ‘crimes’ – the stealing of pens and stationary – his grandmother was seriously ill in Darwin Hospital. The boy came from Groote Eylandt. I recently spent time at Groote Eylandt, and in its three communities. It is a closed island where permission is required to visit. The impoverishment of the people is stark despite the high cultural content. Only three students have ever graduated high school.
But on Groote Eylandt there is the GEMCO manganese mine – one of the richest such projects in the world. The FIFOs have it well – I stayed where they do in Anungu however it is a different story for the rest of the island. Talk about Native Title failing a community. In general, Native Title is a longstanding debacle as a holistic compensatory mechanism. I spent time on Groote Eylandt in responding to the suicide related trauma of a family who lost their 13 year old daughter in April. The island community had a resident counsellor predominately for the FIFOs but no resident counsellors for the locals. I met with the Land Council and we agreed that half a million dollars be set aside for two resident counsellors – female and male.
The degradation of homeland communities across northern and western Australia is the work of one government after another, who are responsible either in stripping social infrastructure and assets from these communities or who have denied the equivalency of services and opportunities to these communities when compared to non-Aboriginal communities.
It was reported that in the week after Johnny’s suicide, that a 22-year-old Groote Eylandt man was sentenced to jail for a Christmas Day ‘crime’ in 1998. He was found guilty of stealing biscuits and cordial from the GEMCO storeroom. Jamie Wurramara was jailed for a so-called $23 crime.
The public outcries come and go and are forgotten, but the broken and ruined lives mount. The toll may eventually become insurmountable. Why?
We do need royal commissions but with a focus on so much more that the nation’s eyes and ears need lending to.
- The Grim Statistics:
- There are four adult prisons in the Northern Territory – Alice Springs Correctional Centre which has more prisoners than prescribed capacity (122 per cent), Darwin Correctional Centre, Barkly Work Camp (also beyond capacity, 136 per cent) and Datjala Work Camp. According to the Northern Territory Government there were nearly 3,300 individuals as prison entrants. At any one time there are nearly 1,400 prisoners in the Territory jails. The rate of imprisonment in the Territory is among the highest in the world – at last count 882 incarcerated per 100,000 adults. The national rate of imprisonment is 191 per 100,000 adults. The Indigenous jailing rate in the Northern Territory is 2,954 per 100,000 adults – one of the world’s highest. The Indigenous jailing rate in Western Australia is 3,686 per 100,000 adults – and fluctuates between the world’s highest and second highest jailing rate (sadly competing with the Black American adult jailing rate).
- The Territory’s population is around 250,000, with 80,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
- One in 80 Northern Territorians in any one year are in jail while and at any one time one in 120 Territorians are in jail, higher than the rate of jailing of the mother of jailers, the United States of America – 1 in 131.
- 84 per cent of the prison population is comprised of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
- There are two juvenile detention centres in the Northern Territory – Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre and Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.
- There are also non-custodial orders administered through eight regional offices throughout the Northern Territory.
- With the Northern Territory’s juvenile detention population last year there were more 230 youths who at one time or another were locked up. 94 per cent were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth. 28 per cent of the youth in juvenile detention were aged less than 15 years.
- Australia’s juvenile detention rate is the world’s highest. Ranked second is the United States’ juvenile detention rate.
Why then are we a signatory to the UN Human Rights charter if this disturbing trend of jailing our mob, especially teenagers, is allowed to continue? Australia has a black history and it’s getting blacker.
EXCELLENT, GREAT ARTICLE GERRY, I ALSO WENT TO GROOTE ISLAND AND I WAS DISGUSTED BY THE INEQUALITIES. SO SAD
This absolutely broke my heart, as a kiwi mum of 2 teenagers my heart bleeds for those kids…Its opened my eyes…our world is doomed.
Sad unable to comprehend. Really horrible are there any one especially politicians
who have some Guts to explore deeper in the system, or just a big promises before the Election
and ends up in the garbage after the election
I am sure there are some honest politicians out there could use their position during their term
to put some words to the policy makers
Those who red the article must have bleeded in their heart. Appeal to right thinking people
to voice their opinion
Great article.
Very disturbing!
A great summary of one of our nation’s greatest shames.
Forgive me for copying a comment I made in another forum :
This exposure of events at Don Dale coincides with the growing public calls for treaty and/or sovereignty. (self determination)
The very name of the inquiry could be construed as discriminatory, or even racist : Royal Commission.
At the very least it is insulting to First Nations’ peoples.
It has already been said publicly that the behaviour of the young fellas is incredibly hard to deal with, as some sort of justification of the Don Dale incidents.
Regrettably, I believe this is true.
Certainly, their behaviour in society is very hard to deal with.
An inquiry that focuses on the relatively recent incidents at Don Dale will be pretty useless in my opinion.
Even looking at the institutional racism in the NT system will probably not result in ongoing positive changes.
We need outcomes that improve the behaviour, attitudes and lifestyle of these young fellas, and the behaviour and attitudes throughout the system.
Otherwise we will witness an expensive and frustrating process, that will probably result in unimplemented recommendations, like the prior Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody.
The underlying causes of the behaviour of both these youths and the system needs investigation, and recommendations to address those causes.
To some extent, people like DON Dale guards are also victims – many would be feeling personally shattered as people.
I am not justifying their abhorrent behaviour, we need to address the causes of it – for the benefit of all Australians.
So what underlies the causes firstly of the youths involved, and many other First Nations’ youths throughout Australia?
The main underlying cause can be attributed to colonisation, and the way it happened across this nation.
One key factor within colonisation that led to some of the terrible incidents is differing value systems.
The most significant of these in my opinion was around concepts of land and ‘ownership’.
These combined undoubtedly led to the initial conflicts that set the course for the relationships between First Nations’ mobs and Oz society.
Approx a decade ago I attended an informal meeting in Perth of half a dozen politicians, with Lois Olney, a Ngarluma woman.
We were discussing ‘Aboriginal issues’.
Two incidents stand out :
1. In moving from one aspect to another aspect of ‘Aboriginal issues’, the politicians were keen to talk and set the agenda, without asking Lois’ or my opinions.
2. I asked the most ‘unenlightened’ of the male pollies present : “How do I explain to a young fella that its wrong to steal a CD player or a car, yet its OK to steal the whole land?”
Unsurprisingly, he had no real answer and reverted to a meaningless response based on suppressed guilt and denial, enforced by his belief in ‘we are superior to them’.
This incident reminds me both of the systemic attitudes leading to the behaviour of the Don Dale officers, and the PM’s actions in establishing the RC.
It also shows the underlying causes of the attitudes and behaviour of many Aboriginal young fellas, and not so young – understandable alienation from society.
For the officers, the young fellas and our society generally, these attitudes and behaviours have been reinforced across the many generations since colonisation.
On the part of First Nations’ peoples, there is an inherent alienation from our so called “justice” system.
Basic principles of English and Aussie law say you cannot gain valid title to property by an illegal act such as theft, or violent theft.
There is no doubt that First Nations’ peoples see colonisation resulting in theft of the whole country, on which their laws, cultures and languages were based : the basis for their individual and collective self esteem.
One incident in particular drove this home to me.
Several years ago I accompanied a young fella who I helped put through law and culture to court in the Pilbara for driving offences.
Naturally the court had a prominent portrait of ‘our’ Queen – representing the institution that colonised and ‘stole’ this land.
The magistrate also sat in an elevated position of superiority and power – again discriminatory to First Nations’ people as its contrary to law and culture. (all are equal and sit on the ground in a circle, altho all have different knowledge and responsibilities).
The court was of course located on land that was originally ‘owned’ by the local mob, and stolen from them with force.
Everyone paid to be there was a white fella (magistrates, court officials, police officers).
The people paying were the offenders, mainly First Nations’ peoples, and mainly local mob on whose lands the court sat and still sits.
Now what ‘reasonable person’ (the standard used in our legal system) would not feel alienated being a First Nations’ person in that court, or any other court?
Of course, the same explanation of alienation applies to all police stations and political institutions.
To me, and I believe many others, any inquiry that does not include the issues of sovereignty and justice, is a continuation of the injustice ingrained in our Aussie society.
Many Aussies feel threatened by consideration of sovereignty – the answer is to present it in a non- threatening manner of advantage to this land and all on her.
WE need to do something about this now, not in 5 years time. Urgent action is required from the highest level. How can we help please let us know so this is not pushed under the carpet.