oh puleeze! this is not new news. the apparent sheer incompetence of state
and territory governments and their respective juvenile justice
departments
is no great secret to those with an ongoing interest in this area.
activists like myself and other interested parties have for far too many
years attempted to properly educate those governments and departments on
solutions but they continue to ignore our advice. the ones who suffer of
course are aboriginal youth, not the politicians and bureaucrats.
i thank p for passing this on to me. my previous post relative to a un
covenant touched briefly on the jj problems and concerns but this article
below has raised further issues complicating the failing systems the
governments continue to push forward as a panacea to the ever-spiralling
numbers of aboriginal youth being locked up.
my arguments relative to the racist actions of the police when coming into
contact with our youth is well known and such concerns are equally and
loudly repeated by those living in aboriginal communities, whether city or
rural communities.
the justice pendulum for aboriginal youth has swung greatly from
magistrates
who constantly refused to consider incarceration as an option which only
frustrated the police when the same youths committed criminal acts on the
same day they were discharged, to magistrates that attempted to lock up
all
aboriginal youth in nsw. of course, neither approach assisted in solving
the
problems. the mitigating factor that needed to be taken into consideration
when dealing with aboriginal youth was called the fernando factor when it
was argued by the defence team for the fernando cousins that the social
deprivation of their upbringing in impoverished circumstances had to be
taken into consideration when sentencing. it is my understanding that this
is no longer used as it is considered that the greater majority of
aboriginal families exist at varying levels of social deprivation.
the police have their view of where things are and where they are going as
do the more overworked and underfunded aboriginal legal services. i
absolutely agree with stephen lawrence of the als nsw western zone as to
the
frustrations from the nsw police and courts handling of those youth to
whom
they come into contact with. that there is a continuing racist bias by
police and most magistrates comes as no surprise. there was a time back in
the 90's where cross-cultural awareness training was all the go but it now
seems to have faded away. bring it back, say i.
i am not suggesting for one moment that all involved in the system, either
as workers or as detainees, can be easily solved but i firmly believe that
other methods should be considered, methods involving the elders of the
identified communities themselves.
some years ago there was a police officer working at walgett who was just
so
proud of himself as being the officer with the highest arrest rate for
aboriginal youth in the state. that attitude has to go. whilst i think
little of such an accolade others in the police force thought otherwise
and
promoted him to inspector! that attitude also has to go. police have to
learn to work with others and, more importantly, to be able to stand back
from further involvement whilst our elders and culture are allowed to run
their course.
i have a great preference for the solutions arising from the mt. theo
process in the nt that was dealing with petrol sniffers who were taken by
elders many miles from their home community to mt theo whereby they were
dried out and cultural instruction given to them. after about 6 months
they
were returned to their home communities and the greater majority
discontinued sniffing as a recreational exercise.
a bit closer to home was a similar operation on an aboriginal station in
the
far west of nsw. i think that our esteemed elder, badger bates, was
involved
in this exercise but i believe it was stopped because of accusations of
brutality from the elders to the youth involved. whilst i for not one
moment
would condone sustained physical brutality against our youth, or anyone
else
for that matter, i have no problem with the elders physically chastising
the
youth involved, who would be known to the elders involved and are probably
related, however distantly.
as we all know we are dealing with fractured and feral youth who have lost
their own culture and elected to participate in the worst areas of
non-aboriginal culture; alcohol and drugs, among other issues. we need to
return our youth to their cultural roots and to their history to wipe out
their perceived normal states of rejection and racism. we do not need the
police to be involved in any way with this exercise, we can and must do it
for ourselves and our children and their children.
we continue to scream at the governments that they breed only failure and
destruction for our youth and it is way past the time to allow our
aboriginal communities and elders to save our own children.
with no police involvement!!!
fkj
ray jackson
president
indigenous social justice association
isja01@internode.on.net
(m) 0450 651 063
(p) 02 9318 0947
address 1303/200 pitt street waterloo 2017
we live and work on the stolen lands of the gadigal people.
sovereignty treaty social justice
Black sentences soar as juvenile jails become a 'storing house'
by: Natasha Robinson
From: The Australian
January 05, 2013 12:00AM
Justice system
Source: The Australian
THE number of Aboriginal children being jailed is soaring at an alarming
rate as the criminal justice system struggles to contain a rising tide of
social dysfunction in urban and regional centres.
Amid concerns that juvenile jails have become storing houses of
Aboriginal
children growing up in squalor and despair, it has emerged that more than
250 indigenous youth in northwestern NSW have been sentenced to juvenile
prison terms during the past five years compared with only 12
non-Aboriginal children.
Incarceration rates of Aboriginal children are also worsening in other
states, as is the chasm between the numbers of indigenous and
non-indigenous children in juvenile detention centres.
Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show the
national rate of Aboriginal juvenile incarceration has risen to a
startling rate of 31 times the non-indigenous rate, up from 27 times in
2008.
In 1994, young Aboriginal people were 17 times more likely than
non-Aboriginal juveniles to be incarcerated.
There is also concern that the constant treadmill of child re-offending
among indigenous youth appears to be driving errant sentencing patterns
in
western NSW children's courts, where The Weekend Australian has
identified
a number of cases in which Aboriginal boys received the harshest
sentences
for stealing ever recorded by juveniles in NSW.
The legal system's handling of the problem has also prompted frustration
within police ranks, with a senior officer based in the city of Dubbo
arguing that juvenile detention centres offer no real prospects of
rehabilitation, and perversely, many young Aborigines see them as
safehouses because they get three meals a day and a roof over their head.
While disputing allegations of overpolicing of Aboriginal youth, Dubbo
police inspector Rod Blackman, the Orana local area crime command
manager,
has issued an urgent call for alternatives to the criminal justice spiral
that is seeing greater and greater numbers of Aboriginal children sent to
juvenile jails.
He said that jails were operating as safehouses for vulnerable children
and the criminal justice system was becoming a proxy social service
provider.
"As controversial as it may sound, sadly there is this very small portion
within our communities that you can almost predict that today's babies
are
tomorrow's offenders," Inspector Blackman said.
"As a society, I think that's a terrible thing, that we can stand back
and
say, 'Well, we've now got two, three, four generations of the same
conduct
and the same sort of dysfunction within the same household', and yet
these
kids are going to be brought up in the exact same manner.
"I've lost count of the number of children who when they are finally
refused bail and end up in our juvenile detention centre, are quite happy
because they know they're going to get fed three times a day, and they
know they're in a safe environment, and quite often they've got other
family members in there.
"There is no deterrent factor.
"The current system is not working."
The number of Aboriginal children being sentenced to juvenile detention
in
NSW is largest in the state's northwest, which includes the council
shires
of Dubbo, Bourke, Brewarrina and Walgett, the mid-north coast, northern
NSW and the Hunter region.
Nationally, the Northern Territory and Western Australia stand out as
having by far the largest proportion of Aboriginal young people in
prison,
with very few non-Aboriginal children in juvenile detention at all in the
NT. Indigenous children make up 70 per cent of the juvenile prison
population in Western Australia.
The Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT points to overpolicing of Aboriginal
youth and the misuse of the juvenile detention system by magistrates in
rural areas with large Aboriginal populations as significant contributors
to the overrepresentation of indigenous youth in children's courts.
"The causes of the horrendous rate of Aboriginal juvenile
overrepresentation are complex but in the rural and remote parts of the
state, sustained and targeted policing and draconian sentencing trends
are
playing an undeniable role," said Stephen Lawrence, principal solicitor
with the ALS western zone.
"Certain magistrates are regularly imposing extraordinarily harsh
sentences on Aboriginal youth that simply cannot be justified under state
sentencing law."
According to figures obtained by the ALS and seen by The Weekend
Australian, the maximum number of non-Aboriginal children from Dubbo and
surrounding areas being sentenced to detention in any year during the
past
five years is three, whereas in some years more than 60 Aboriginal have
been sentenced to terms of incarceration.
There is strong pressure from within communities in the NSW northwest and
central west for magistrates to take repeat offenders, who are
overwhelmingly Aboriginal, off the streets, but some members of the Dubbo
indigenous community complain that Aboriginal children are actively and
unfairly targeted by police.
They say police know who their targets are and rigorously monitor wayward
boys using suspect target management plans, under which those on police
watch lists are watched and "engaged".
In the past year, two Aboriginal boys were sentenced to as long as 18
months in juvenile jails for stealing $750 - court orders that exceeded
the maximum sentence laid out under the law. One of the sentences was
subsequently reduced. One of the boys was also given a 12-month juvenile
jail term for possessing 1.8gm of marijuana and a third was given a
12-month sentence for stealing $70 worth of hamburger rolls, which was
reduced to a good behaviour bond with no conviction.
The ALS alleges that magistrates sitting in numerous courts across the
central and far NSW west are "sentencing in a radically harsh way".
"It used to be that social deprivation was a mitigating factor in
sentencing. However, this increasingly doesn't seem to be the case. The
tragedy of this utterly misguided approach is that nothing increases a
child's prospects of moving on to a life of crime more than a stint in
juvenile detention," Mr Lawrence said.
The idea that Aboriginal children are punished more harshly than
non-Aboriginal children by the justice system is hotly contested by
police, the judiciary and some academics.
In recent months, Dubbo magistrate Andrew Eckhold has been voicing his
deep frustration from the bench at the inability of juvenile justice
services and the court system to prevent repeat offending by children.
Children as young as 10 are appearing in court with extensive records and
evidence of scant parental supervision. "I really don't know what our
society can do about these matters," Mr Eckhold said during a case
involving a 10-year-old boy facing multiple breaches of bail curfew.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/black-senten...