Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about: the appalling rate of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples about Aboriginal deaths in custody and about those with cognitive impairment who are being held in indefinite custody in this country. The Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage report, released last week, has highlighted the growing gap in incarceration rates in Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians made up only 2.3 per cent of the adult population but over a quarter of the adult prison population as at 30 June 2013. Between 2000 and 2013, the imprisonment rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults increased by 57.4 per cent, while the non-Indigenous rate remained fairly constant, leading to a widening of the gap. In 2012-13, the daily average detention rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people was around 24 times the rate for non-Indigenous young people.

This is simply appalling and not enough has been done to address the issue, which is why so many people are calling for the establishment of justice targets to help provide a clear framework in which the federal government and state and territory governments can work with communities and peak Aboriginal organisations to look at how we address this appalling statistic and appalling failure of our system.

The government's cuts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs I deeply believe will only make the situation worse as we see critical services lose funding. At the moment, their futures are at risk, which undermines their ability to deliver their programs. There must be a commitment to fund critical legal services, advocacy services and community programs that help meet these justice targets. I was deeply disturbed when the minister refused last week to consider the issue of justice targets, which, as I said, community organisations had been calling for for a long time—including the close the gap campaign.

One of the bright spots last week was the release of the Social Justice Commissioner's Social justice and native title report 2014. While his report had some very distressing information in it, it was a bright spot because it is shining a light on the issue. The government—and everybody—needs to have a good read and take to heart what is said in that report. One of the comments that he made was around justice reinvestment. He said in that report:

In the past five years, it has been encouraging to see so many different people and groups embrace justice reinvestment. However, in all of this enthusiasm we have seen some confusion around what justice reinvestment actually involves. Some academics have warned of the potential pitfalls if justice reinvestment becomes a:

'catch-all buzz word to cover a range of post release, rehabilitative, restorative justice and other policies and programs and thus lose both any sense of internal coherence and the key characteristic that it involves a redirection of resources.'

In my view, it is not necessarily detrimental that advocates in Australia are already trying to adapt justice reinvestment for the Australian context. What works in the United States can be a powerful catalyst for action, but will require thoughtful adaptation to the Australian context. Nonetheless, if the Australian brand of justice reinvestment strays too far from the evidence we may lose some of the strength of this approach.

There is now a growing body of literature on justice reinvestment, so this chapter will only briefly summarise some of the key principles and processes of justice reinvestment to provide clarity and context.

He says:

Justice reinvestment is a powerful crime prevention strategy that can help create safer communities by investing in evidence based prevention and treatment programs. Justice reinvestment looks beyond offenders to the needs of victims and communities.

Justice reinvestment diverts a portion of the funds for imprisonment to local communities where there is a high concentration of offenders. The money that would have been spent on imprisonment is reinvested into services that address the underlying causes of crime in these communities.

My take on that is that we need to be investing in justice reinvestment, we need to make sure that we get it right and that it works, and we need to customise it for the Australian context. For too long, governments at the state, territory and Commonwealth levels have been sitting on their hands when it comes to justice reinvestment. We need to make sure that that is linked to justice targets, but it is a powerful way of addressing the issues that I have been talking about: the appallingly high rate of incarceration for both young and adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

He also cites an example of the Cowra justice investment program and talks about some of the progress that has been made there. He says:

Participation in the project by the Cowra community has enabled the team to identify issues underlying the incarceration of its young people. Specifically, community groups and organisations have been consulted throughout the project to assist in identifying effective alternatives to prison which ought to be invested in, such as holistic and long-term initiatives, and better integrated services. Young people will also be interviewed about their experiences and suggestions for change.

These are the important programs that we do need to be investing in. Cutting legal services and cutting other essential funding—half a billion dollars out of funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders—is not going to help these types of projects.

Of course, you cannot talk about incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples without talking about deaths in custody and the alarming number of Aboriginal people who have died in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, let alone the number of people who died before the royal commission. The majority of the 339 recommendations made by the commission have not been implemented. Again, I need to raise in this place the death of Miss Dhu, a 22-year-old who died in custody in Western Australia in August. Miss Dhu was not sentenced to a custodial term; she was fined, and it was because of nonpayment of fines that she ended up in prison and died in prison. This has to stop. In this country, we need to address the issue of deaths in custody and not pretend that, just because we had a royal commission, all of a sudden it is solved. All levels of government need to show leadership in the implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and to develop programs that address the unacceptably high rate of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We need meaningful action.

The other issue that I would like to raise about incarceration is the indefinite incarceration of people with cognitive impairments. Predominantly, this affects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is simply unacceptable in modern Australia to indefinitely hold in custody people who have not been found guilty of a crime or sentenced to prison. Many of the people who we are talking about have been found unfit to stand trial. What happens is that, instead of making sure that we then look after these people, we put them in maximum security prison—some are not in maximum security prison, but a lot are—indefinitely. This is happening around the country.

In my home state of Western Australia, last year there were 37 people with what was termed a mental impairment being held indefinitely in Western Australia. We have obligations under various conventions to make sure that we look after people with a disability. We also, obviously, have signed up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is unacceptable that people are held in jail indefinitely when they have a cognitive impairment.

We heard again yesterday that Australia had breached its obligations, under various UN conventions, for four Aboriginal men with cognitive impairments in the Northern Territory. The response from this government has been to wash their hands of this issue, to disagree with the Australian Human Rights Commission's findings on the cases of these four Aboriginal men, and to say that it is not the government's responsibility. The government basically attacked the Australian Human Rights Commission for the findings that it made in relation to these four men. Australia has lost its way if we think it is acceptable that people who have not been found guilty of any crime but, in most cases, have been found unfit to plead or stand trial are then held indefinitely in maximum security prison. It is unacceptable: they have a cognitive impairment. On the day that we are celebrating International Day of People with Disability, we need to be committing to action to ensure that we address this appalling situation.