On 29 May the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle hosted a historic Law and Order forum, bringing in senior figures who deal with the everyday realities to nut out practical solutions that benefit both the offenders and the wider community
By Anthony Barich
Better-resourced government agencies need to link up more and help empower Aboriginal families and communities to solve the problems that plague them, a 29 May Law and Order Forum at the University of Notre Dame Australia concluded.
The increase in social-related crimes as opposed to property crime is due to the breakdown of the family in modern society, and government agencies should be mobilised to support families to solve their own problems, Broome Bishop Christopher Saunders told The Record after being a panellist at the forum.
“Something is happening where the family is being broken down badly, and we’re asking the police to give a response to something that really should be a family issue,” he said during the forum at the Fremantle campus.
Bishop Saunders discussed practical solutions to overcrowding in prisons and the disproportionate percentage of Aboriginal incarceration with panellists Wayne Martin, WA Chief Justice, Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan, Malcolm McCusker QC and WA Newspapers crime reporter Colleen Egan.
McMcusker is one of four trustees of the MsCusker Charitable Foundation which focuses on medical research and advancement of medical science; the care, welfare and education of young people; promotion of high achievement and excellence; support for the aged and infirm; and the arts and environment.
Panellists agreed that prevention was better than cure, and root causes need to be recognised and fixed for true rehabilitation to occur. Corrective services itself needs reform and needs to focus more on rehabilitation both during – “when they have your undivided attention” – and after the prison term.
MISPLACED CONFIDENCE IN PRISON SYSTEM
Justice Martin said there is a “misplaced confidence” in punishment like prison discouraging people from re-offending. Crime, he said, is not a rational phenomenon, as “a high proportion of crimes are committed by people not behaving rationally”.
He said that while there must be consequences for crime, prison itself won’t rehabilitate, while Mr O’Callaghan added that the responsibility for society’s ills does not solely rest with the police.
“The challenge is to change the dialogue in society about approaches to problems like substance abuse. The key is to invest equally in child protection, mental health, and other support services,” Mr O’Callaghan said.
While police effectiveness is gauged by the amount of crime occurring, there are no such performance indicators for corrective services, despite alarming rates of re-offenders. “There needs to be more stringent accountability,” he said.
Justice Martin quoted several WA figures that showed the criminal justice system is not working to rehabilitate offenders:
l The rate of incarceration of adult Aboriginal men in June 2008 was one in 15.
l In 2008, the rate of incarceration of adult Aboriginal females was about one in 160.
l Adult Aborigines are imprisoned at 25 times the rate of non-Aborigines.
l A recent Australian Institute of Criminology report confirmed that WA has by far the highest rate of detention of indigenous juveniles in Australia – about 700 per 100,000 in June 2007. The next highest rate of incarceration of Aboriginal juveniles was South Australia, where the rate was 528.
l Conversely, in Western Australia the rate of detention for non-indigenous juveniles is one of the lowest in the country.
l The proportion of Aboriginal juveniles in detention in WA has, in recent years, generally varied between 75 and 80 per cent of all those detained.
l About 40 per cent of male adult non-Aboriginal prisoners leaving prison between 1 July 1998 and 30 June 2008 had returned to prison before early May 2009. However, in the case of Aboriginal prisoners, the equivalent figure was just under 70 per cent.
l For female prisoners, the rate of return to prison for non-Aboriginal prisoners over the same period was about 30 per cent, compared to about 55 per cent for Aboriginal prisoners.
l For juveniles, the rate of return to custody over the same period for female Aboriginal detainees was about 64 per cent, and for male Aboriginal detainees about 80 per cent.
Quoting these same stats to the Department of Corrective Services in September last year, he said that “this is obviously a portent of the future”.
“Absent dramatic change in current trends, it is highly likely that these young Aboriginal offenders will form part of the group of adult Aboriginal offenders who are so over-represented in our prisons,” he said in a talk entitled Corrective Services for Indigenous Offenders – Stopping the Revolving Door.
There are also problems for non-indigenous prisoners.
Mr McCusker noted evidence that “attractive young men” suffer a “pre-determined fate” and are often gang-raped, made worse by the cramped conditions and even more so by WA Attorney General Christian Porter’s suggestion last year to “increase capacity” by putting two beds where there was barely enough room for one.
For both Aborigines and non-Aborigines, there is a culture in prisons of very little hope, as parole seems at times impossible.
He applauded Justice Martin’s recent suggestion that the court appoint the sentence and the parole, so offenders would be given hope and reduce pressure on the prison population.
UNDA politics lecturer Dr Martin Drum, who organised the forum, said treating the symptom of offenders’ problems is the key, otherwise solving crime problems by increasing the capacity or number of prisons “is like saying the solution to road safety is more coffins”.
Helping integrate offenders into the community as part of rehabilitation also helps the wider community as they are encouraged to not only root out their own vice but take more responsibility in the community, he said.
LOST IDENTITY, LOST CULTURE
Adding to this, Nyoongar elder Dr Noel Nannup, part of another forum specialist panel discussing sentencing and indigenous incarceration, said Aborigines, especially youth, have lost their sense of identity as a cumulative effect of colonisation, and must be educated on it so their communities can solve their own problems.
“If you lose respect for yourself, how can you respect anyone else?” he said. “If you don’t know who you are, how do you know how to behave?”
Government agency employees like police and custodial officers also need cross-cultural training to facilitate this, including knowledge of the particular community in question, to ensure that communities are conducive to behaviour modification, Bishop Saunders said.
Bishop Saunders said that agency employees dealing with cases must have an intimate knowledge of the dynamics of families and communities, and the offenders’ relationship within them as, when a father or Aboriginal elder is imprisoned, that leaves a gaping hole in that dynamic.
While panellists agreed that Aborigines should be given control over their destiny, Children’s Court Judge Denis Reynolds said that government support agencies are “often reluctant to relinquish control”, but need to so that Aboriginal communities can learn how to restore themselves.
“Aborigines are best equipped to come up with solutions for their own people,” he said.
However, as WA is so vast and remote communities have their own unique dynamics, what works in one community would not necessarily work in another.
This reinforces the need for government agencies to help communities tailor programmes for their own needs and issues.
Presently, solutions are “very Perth-centric”, he said, “and that thinking needs to change”. Programmes need to be tailored to fit all three levels of society – for children, families and community levels.
Going further, Justice Reynolds told the forum that courts should have a register of Aboriginal support organisations and individuals so that offenders who committed crime due to an underlying problem like drug or alcohol abuse can be outsourced and managed – but not controlled – by the Department of Corrective Services, thus empowering Aboriginal communities to fix themselves.
He also advocated culturally specific programmes so that Aborigines can deliver them in communities.
“Criminal justice should support social justice,” Judge Reynolds said, adding that the solution rests with Aboriginal people.
Also preventing Aborigines from progress in society are government agencies’ “hang-up” with criminal records.
“There are many decent Aborigines out there who have been rehabilitated and have moved on with their lives, yet they aren’t allowed to because the agency won’t take people with a record,” he said.
These Aborigines could be crucial to the greater good, he said, as they can mentor younger indigenous Australians of the perils of taking certain paths as they have been there before.
Dr Nannup said his son, who served nine years in prison for “what the judge called ‘urban terrorism’”, is now rehabilitated and serves an important role in the community.
“To understand the solutions, we must understand every stage of history,” Dr Nannup said, “just as a doctor can’t do anything for you if he doesn’t know your history.
By being excluded from everything for a long period since federation, including the right to vote and to own property, Aboriginal people were reduced to “absolutely depending on this system”.
“An ancient culture should be trusted with its own destiny,” he said.
The problems Aboriginal people face both in rural and city areas are several-fold.
Justice Martin said that Aborigines receive longer sentences and are less likely to get bail as they cannot meet requirements like employment, education and family stability.
He added that the greater the prison term, the greater the chance of re-offending.
The key cause of crime, especially among Aboriginal youth, is disempowerment and disconnection – “the adverse affects of colonisation”, Judge Reynolds said.
“There is no sense of self-esteem or cultural identity. Aboriginal children often look after younger siblings and even care for their own parents, and in doing so are being denied their own childhood,” he said.
MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES
Recent times have seen the emergence of increased mental health issues, he said, including fetal alcohol syndrome, a pattern of physical and mental defects that occurs in unborn babies when the mother drinks to excess.
Mr McCusker said that these mental health issues, also contributed to by the exposure of many Aboriginal children to the trauma of crime and violence in family life, means many are simply not fit to stand trial, nor fit to deal with the paper work for driver’s licences, etc. This, despite many 10 year old Aboriginal boys being sent to youth detention facilities.
Crime is best prevented, he said, by treating young offenders by helping them with drug and alcohol problems. Binge drinking, which he said is “widespread in the community”, requires education, determination and government involvement.
Often, be-cause of these factors, the crime is not pre-meditated – it is therefore not rational, he said.
“While some prisoners are a danger to the community, real rehabilitation isn’t occurring,” he said.
Mr O’Callaghan agreed that people who are in prison for not paying fines should not be there, while Mr McCusker suggested amnesty for certain prisoners and prison alternatives like community service and home detention for some white collar crimes.
This will relieve prison overcrowding while promoting rehabilitation.
“This will also stop them being exposed to the dangers of prison, as young offenders often know more about committing crimes when they get out than when they went in,” Mr McCusker said.