Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take the opportunity today to also contribute, along with the member for Higgins and others who have spoken previously, to the debate on this particularly important report, of June 2011, of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs that has been presented to the parliament Doing time—time for doing: Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system. I indicate the tremendous work that has been done by the committee and acknowledge Shane Neumann as the chair and Sharman Stone as the deputy chair of that committee. I note that the member for Durack is also a member of the committee and is here to participate in this debate.

Some reports are presented before this parliament that, I believe, are of such significance to the nation that all of us should engage with the report. I believe this is one of those reports. This particular report tells a story of our nation. It is a difficult one to hear and it confronts us with some real challenges. Sadly, they are not new challenges. The foreword of the report indicates that, in fact, it is 20 years since the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and, despite that report, over the time that has subsequently passed the incarceration rate of Indigenous Australians, including Indigenous youth, who are the subject of this report, has actually worsened. Sadly, Indigenous juveniles are 28 times more likely than non-Indigenous juveniles to be incarcerated, despite Indigenous peoples representing only 2.5 per cent of the Australian population. This is a state of affairs that I think requires the urgent attention of all governments, communities and people across this nation.

The report goes to great length and into great detail to outline the extensive social and economic disadvantage that contributes to the high levels of Indigenous contact with the criminal justice system. It is clear from the committee's investigation that there is intergenerational dysfunction in some Indigenous communities that presents a truly significant challenge of breaking that cycle of offending, recidivism and incarceration.

There is so much in this report that it would be difficult to encompass it all in a 15-minute contribution in this place. So I want to focus specifically on where we as a nation, sadly, sit in terms of these contacts and incarcerations. Secondly, I want to generally touch on some of those contributing factors and some of my own experiences in the field and then, finally, to talk about one local program in my area that I think is representative of the sorts of activities that can make a difference.

As I indicated, the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody came down in 1991. So this year, at the time of this report we are debating, we are 20 years down the track since that point in time. The committee drew together research and statistics gathered from state and national authorities. I want to indicate some of these to the House. I think they speak for themselves. Sometimes statistics can be a way of hiding the truth, as many have quoted the famous quote: 'Lies, damned lies and statistics.' However, I think in this case they actually illuminate for us very clearly the issue that we are dealing with.

The detention rate for Indigenous juveniles is 397, per 100,000. That is 28 times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous juveniles. In 2007 Indigenous juveniles accounted for 59 per cent of the total juvenile detention population, despite Indigenous people being 2.5 per cent of the total population. There is clearly a strong link between the disproportionate rate of juvenile detention and the disproportionate rate of adult imprisonment. Not surprisingly, if many of those adults being imprisoned are from Indigenous families then the flow-on impact on the children of those families sees an increase in their contact with the system and incarceration as well. At this time 25 per cent of all prisoners in Australia are Indigenous despite, as I said, being 2.5 per cent of the population.

Prison census data shows that between 2000 and 2010 the number of both Indigenous men and Indigenous women has increased markedly—Indigenous men by 55 per cent and Indigenous women by 47 per cent. When we comprehend how significant Indigenous women are to the fabric of Indigenous communities and to holding families together, from the increasing level of incarceration of those leaders in families and communities we can see why there are dysfunctional families with intergenerational problems and incarceration becoming a serious issue. Between 2000 and 2009 the imprisonment rate of Indigenous Australians increased 66 per cent. It is a really difficult statistic for us to get our heads around but, more importantly, it challenges us to say, 'This is something that we really need to seriously take on board to find strategies that work.'

Indigenous juveniles and young adults are much more likely to come into contact with police in comparison with their non-Indigenous counterparts. So the first point of contact is a place at which an important intervention can occur. In 2008 over 40 per cent of all Indigenous men in Australia reported having been formally charged with an offence by police before they reached the age of 25. That is 40 per cent of all Indigenous men.

Indigenous juveniles are overrepresented in both community and detention based supervision. Indigenous juveniles make up 53 per cent of all juveniles in detention and 39 per cent of all juveniles under community supervision. Importantly, they are younger than the average of those in the system. Twenty-two per cent of Indigenous juveniles in detention were aged 14 or younger, compared with only 14 per cent of non-Indigenous juveniles.

It should be also acknowledged—and the committee makes this important point—that the adverse contact with the criminal justice system for Indigenous people is not confined to their being offenders. It is also, sadly, the fact that they are more often than not victims of crime as well. In particular, they are more likely to be victims of violent crime than non-Indigenous people. The impact of that on communities is important to recognise.

Between 2006 and 2007 Indigenous women were 35 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of spousal partner violence than non-Indigenous women. When we think of the impact of that on families and young people and the direct link between violence in families and engagement with the criminal justice system, we can see why there is such a problem. The committee acknowledged in its report that Indigenous victimisation rates are an important part of the problem that need to be addressed.

In 1991 the royal commission indicated in its report:

The more fundamental causes of over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody are not to be found in the criminal justice system but those factors which bring Aboriginal people into conflict with the criminal justice system in the first place ... [and] the most significant contributing factor is the disadvantaged and unequal position in which Aboriginal people find themselves in society - socially, economically and culturally.

Twenty years later that still stands the test of time.

The committee report goes into significant coverage of the particular aspects of disadvantage and overrepresentation of Indigenous juveniles among young offenders. They include the broad categories of social norms and individual family dysfunction, which I have touched on to some extent, and connection to community and culture. There are some very moving stories in the report which were told by Indigenous elders, who talk about their young generation being caught between two worlds. It is not that they are connected to one and not the other; it is not that they are connected to the traditional culture and are therefore not able to participate in modern society or that they are connected to modern society and have lost their traditional culture. Rather it is that they are lost between the two, which is the worst possible circumstance you could imagine for them.

The health implications are talked about in the report. In particular, it discusses the issues around drug and alcohol abuse. It not only discusses drug and alcohol abuse in the environments in which young people are present but also discusses abuse by young people themselves and the impact it has on bringing them into the justice system. The education issues are talked about—the challenges not only of keeping young people in general engaged but also and in particular the challenges of keeping Indigenous young people engaged, and the member for Higgins talked about some of those. The employment link is discussed—getting through education and getting a job is also an important indicator and more of a challenge for our Indigenous young people than it is for our non-Indigenous young people. Accommodation is also discussed—the challenges around providing safe and secure housing and a permanent and ongoing address and how significant that is for young people. I recommend that all members of our communities have a look at both those aspects of the report in some detail and the very important recommendations that are made in the report.

In the few minutes I have left, I will make some observations about a recommendation of the report which addresses police training and Indigenous employment. Included in recommendation 23 is a suggestion for, 'Incentives to increase the employment of Indigenous police men and women and opportunities for mentoring and police work experience for Indigenous students.' I think that would be a very worthwhile initiative. One of the saddest comments I ever heard when I worked for juvenile justice was from a young Indigenous man who was in detention. He was completing his schooling—he was 17—and was engaged in some volunteer work for local emergency services. He said that the worst thing in his life that he could imagine was being released from detention and being sent back to his family and community. He knew that that the dysfunction there was such that it would be very hard for him to resist falling back into the old ways that had got him into trouble in the first place; it would also mean that it would be unlikely that he could continue with either his education or his potential employment opportunities, which were occurring because of his engagement in volunteering activity. I thought that was this saddest thing that I had ever heard—that a young person could say to me with years of experience under his belt that he was better off in detention than he would have been in the community, and I think that that remains a challenge for us.

I want to acknowledge Project Murra in my own area of the Illawarra. This project is conducted through Warrigal Employment and began in 2008 as a partnership between the local commander of the police service in Lake Illawarra, the local TAFE and Warrigal employment. It is a particularly successful two-year program of school based traineeships with the police service which has now been extended to other emergency services and been done in conjunction with the HSC. It keeps young Indigenous people engaged in school and provides some real connections to the police and emergency services. It contributes to crime prevention because the community is connected to the police service. It also contributes to school retention and is an important employment strategy. The program has been going so well that the police service have continued with it and, indeed, it has been extended to other emergency services. The program has been supported and funded by the federal Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations and by New South Wales TAFEs as well as by the services. It is creating a much stronger relationship between those services and the local Indigenous community, and in the class of 2009 there were 12 students—three with the Wollongong police, three with Lake Illawarra police, two with Nowra police, three with the New South Wales ambulance service and one with the state emergency service. That is the current cohort, which is going through to completion now. Overall, it is a really good program which has multiple benefits: it is well regarded by the community, it is a great asset to the broader community and it increases the capacity for young people to be connected. I understand that one of the young people is at the police academy completing the degree, continuing their enrolment and engagement with the police service. That is a good local story, but a small one. We all need to be focused on doing far more to address the issues that have been raised in this very important report.

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