Australia’s backwater, Western Australia continues to incarcerate First People at not only the nation’s highest rate but also among the world’s highest jailing rates. Too few in our parliaments have stood up to say that they will do something about it. I have heard far too many of those born into privilege, who wield excessive influence, who are in high office and who believe that “it is the burden (Aboriginal people) wake up to each day”, “it is the lot of Aboriginal people”. They argue that the extinguishing of racism is a long journey. But truth is their complacency and inaction, their justifications, are veils and layers of racism.
Too few speak out and too few back the ways forward, and in so doing languish people in dungeons of senseless despair. Australia is one of the most racist nations on the planet. The statistics are loud and clear on the racism, on the Black and White divide. Australia is home to the world’s 12th largest economy, is the 2nd wealthiest nation per capita, and boasts the world’s highest median wages. Western Australia is the wealthiest jurisdiction in the Australian nation, with the nation’s highest median wages.
With all this wealth, there is no excuse for the third-world-akin impoverishment of more than 100,000 of the continent’s First Peoples. Tens of thousands First People live in corrals of misery – in what are in effect shanty towns. The racist divide is damaging the national consciousness, reigniting the cheap racism that abuses First Peoples as inferior, as incapable. This racist divide with its pronounced inhumanity, year in year out, is making the poorest poorer, with arrest and imprisonment rates, with reoffending increasing.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014, the Northern Territory had the highest imprisonment rate – 850 prisoners per 100,000 adult population, a shocking rate. Western Australia follows with 264 prisoners per 100,000 adult population, another shocking rate. But the true picture is only understood if we disaggregate the data. I began doing this ten years ago during the first of two separate Masters. My research focused in unveiling governmental racist policies that I argued lead to what I describe as racialised imprisonment.
According to the latest ABS reporting, the highest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imprisonment rate for the June quarter 2014 was recorded in Western Australia – 3,661 Aboriginal and Torres Strait prisoners per 100,000 per 100,000 adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. This unbelievable rate in a State with an overall imprisonment rate of 264 prisoners per 100,000 population. No-one in their right mind can argue that this is not racialised imprisonment. The Northern Territory Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is jailed at a 2,861 per 100,000, and South Australia’s First Peoples at 2,388. The more west one goes on this continent the worse it is for First People – the worse the arrest, imprisonment, homeless and suicide rates.
The Western Australian Aboriginal adult male imprisonment rate often surpasses 4,000 prisoners per 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. The mother of all jailers, the United States of America incarcerates its Black male population at a jailing rate around 4,000 per 100,000.
Today, one in 13 of Western Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult males are in jail. Let me state this again, one in 13. Unless something changes, unless the Western Australian parliament gets its act together and starts discussing its racism, its jailing rates, its neglect of the First Peoples in the wealthiest jurisdiction of the 2nd wealthiest nation per capita on this planet, then it is only going to get worse.
Privilege often has an intolerance of the poor, and privilege coupled with racism is disastrous – an unbridgeable chasm.
Having worked with people pre-release and post-release from jail, it is my view that they come out worse than they went in. The majority of first offenders are criminalised for poverty-related minor offences. But jail breaks them, despairs them, ruins them. This is evident in the high suicide and unnatural death rates post-release within the first six months. This is evident in the high reoffending rates. Second, third and fourth offences are usually more serious than the first offence.
Jail should be a last resort but it is too often a first port of call. Only legislators can change this. Jail should also be a restorative experience, one that helps people to heal from their own traumas and waywardness. We need redemption and not guilt.
One in 13 of all the State’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult males in jail is bullshit. We should not accept this. The rubbish that there is a ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ in prisons, and that Aboriginal youth ‘does jail’ as some sort of modern day ‘rite of passage’ is crap – more stereotypical bullshit racism shoved down our throats. Don’t mix up looking out for one another as some ‘brotherhood’ that the young aspire to. Jail is the last place they wanted to end up.
Dear Gerry,
I found this article interesting because I didn’t know these facts.
Thanks for sharing this insightful and ugly truths the Australian Government need to fix.
Sincerely
Jason Clancy.
Never give up the fight for what’s right. People despair at the horrific numbers but don’t stop trying to change it.
I would be really interested to hear stats on what level of schooling these people have attained. Surely, higher levels of education lead to a lower likelihood of ending up in jail. If that is indeed the case, perhaps ensuring more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children get to, and stay in school longer.
SBS radio interview on the 600 per cent rise in jailing people for unpaid fines http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/10/29/unpaid-fines-leading-indigenous-over-representation
“Jail should be a last resort but it is too often a first port of call.”
Hear, hear. We aren’t tough on crime, we are weak on crime, pathetically weak on crime.
Australia is the way it is (a disgusting hellhole of corruption, hate, racism and an ever-widening class gap) because the wealthy few like it that way.
When you have a puppet government under the Murdoch thumb in a remote geographic location, the ‘pickings’ are ripe for wealthy and corrupt sociopaths and their assortment of oppressive corporate cronies.
Australia’s the “second wealthiest nation per capita” you say? For who? Certainly not for over 90% of it’s occupants! Let’s get real here.
Australia is a mental, social and political disease – and those with a sense of decency are abandoning ship.
I’ve been asked to help Ngalla Maya Noongar Employment Access Founder, MD Merv Eades to organise a suicide & deaths in custody postvention, prevention & early intervention meeting from noon on Dec4. Thankfully Gerry will hopefully be there too and we will be able to journey together, everybody achieves more = team.
WGAR News: Sisters on the Inside, Babies on the Outside: The Wire [Featuring Debbie Kilroy, Dr Jennifer James & Kat Armstrong]
https://indymedia.org.au/2014/12/09/wgar-news-sisters-on-the-inside-babies-on-the-outside-the-wire-featuring-debbie-kilroy-dr
Contents:
* Audio: Laura Corrigan, The Wire: Sisters on the Inside, Babies on the Outside [Featuring Debbie Kilroy, Dr Jennifer James & Kat Armstrong]
* Media Release: Greens Senator Rachel Siewert: Prime Minister lacks commitment to reducing incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
* Audio: Daria Norman, The Wire: Indigenous incarceration rates continue to rise [Featuring Sarah Hopkins & Mick Gooda]
* Background to Justice Reinvestment, Aboriginal imprisonment and Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
* Audio: NIRS: Mentally-impaired men imprisoned without conviction for ‘exceptional’ periods of time
* Audio: NIRS: Mentally-impaired man didn’t receive appropriate care in prison: Guardian
* Audio: NIRS: Mentally-impaired people in jails ‘trapped in legal no man’s land’
* Media Release: Greens Senator Rachel Siewert: Attorney General fails to address human rights issues over detention of four Aboriginal men with cognitive impairment
* Video: Greens Senator Rachel Siewert: Human Rights report into imprisonment of people with a cognitive impairment
* Background: WGAR News on Continuing Stolen Generation, Aboriginal deaths in custody, and Aboriginal suicide
WGAR Background: Justice Reinvestment, Aboriginal imprisonment and Aboriginal deaths in custody
https://indymedia.org.au/2014/12/24/wgar-background-justice-reinvestment-aboriginal-imprisonment-and-aboriginal-deaths-in
WGAR News: …
https://indymedia.org.au/2015/02/01/wgar-news-grandmothers-against-removals-call-for-support
Contents: …
* News: SNAICC: We must look to our humanity to solve the crisis of Indigenous incarceration
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: More than 15 % in jail for unpaid fines
* WGAR Background: Justice Reinvestment, Aboriginal imprisonment and Aboriginal deaths in custody
WGAR News: Justice for Julieka Campaign: Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA
https://indymedia.org.au/2015/02/06/wgar-news-justice-for-julieka-campaign-deaths-in-custody-watch-committee-wa
Contents:
* Bulletin: January edition of the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA Inc ‘iNSiDE Out’ E-Bulletin
* Campaign: Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA: Justice for Julieka Campaign
* Petition: Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA: Petition in relation to the Death in Police Custody of 22 year old Ms Dhu
* News: Amy McQuire, New Matilda: Julieka Dhu’s Family Slams Barnett Govt Over Death In Custody And Town Closures
* News: Human Rights Law Centre: Still no answers for the family of Julieka Dhu
* News: Caitlyn Gribbin, ABC News: Ms Dhu’s family call for urgent inquest into Aboriginal woman’s death in police custody
* Audio: Warren Barnsley and ABC News, NIRS: Calls for answers on Ms Dhu’s death continue six months later [Featuring Ms Dhu’s grandmother, Carol Roe]
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: Family of Ms Dhu still waiting for answers
* Analysis / Opinion: Nancy Jeffrey, The Daily Telegraph: Statistics that tell us things have to change
* Analysis / Opinion: Chris Sarra, The Guardian: We must look to our humanity to solve the crisis of Indigenous incarceration
* Audio: Jordan Curtis, The Wire: Campaign to lower young indigenous incarceration [Featuring Sarah Hopkins, Chairperson of Just Reinvest & Mick Gooda]
* Analysis / Opinion: Jason Thomas, SBS News: How much does it cost to keep people in Australian jails?
* Analysis / Opinion: PS News: Call for justice on legal aid cuts
* News: Land Rights News – Northern Edition: APONT raises concerns over youth in detention
* Analysis / Opinion: John B. Lawrence SC, Land Rights News – Northern Edition: Lock-up mania: NT leads the world
* Analysis / Opinion: Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: 11 years on, the protests remain large but no justice for TJ Hickey family
* WGAR Background: Justice Reinvestment, Aboriginal imprisonment and Aboriginal deaths in custody
Our kids need to be looked after from birth. They need to be loved and nurtured. They need to feel safe and secure. A lot of our children are raised into poverty and see their parents living on welfare, they also see family members end up in jail for Domestic Violence.
We need to get our kids educated and working. We need to get out of the welfare state. We are responsible for our children.
Alcohol and drugs are prevalent right throughout and a lot of our youth that have skipped school end up on this path. If you can’t read or write, what change does a person have of gaining employment in a well paid job that they enjoy? NOTE.
We need to have day cares up and running so we can teach our kids from an early age, not wait until they’re 5. A child starts on the back foot at this age.
We need to start yesterday and not stop.