Unfinished business: Koori women and the justice system Page 26

22 Unfinished business: Koori women and the justice system

Systemic drivers the link between
disadvantage and offending

Since colonisation, the Victorian Koori community
has been subjected to laws and policies that have
resulted in multifaceted disadvantage across all
aspects of their lives. The community has been
affected by the dispossession from traditional
lands, removal from their family and community
and ongoing segregation from society based
on racial discrimination. The impact on the Koori
community is thus intergenerational, and affects
relationships with family, with land, identity, health,
education, and employment.

These experiences have a direct impact on the
over-representation of Koori people in the criminal
justice system. This is not unique to Victoria. Over
20 years ago, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal
Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) found that the over-
representation in the criminal justice system was
due to deep structural disadvantage faced by
Aboriginal Australians and their "disadvantaged
and unequal position in ... society socially,
economically and culturally".

In very simple terms the RCIADIC summed up the
problem when it reported that Aboriginal deaths in
custody arose "not because Aboriginal people are
more likely to die than others in custody... [but
that] too many Aboriginal people are in custody
too often".

There are numerous systemic factors driving Koori
people's disadvantage and so contact with the
criminal justice system. These are well understood
and include poverty, poor education outcomes,
substance misuse, unstable housing and mental
health disability, homelessness, family violence and
trauma.

Each of these issues was consistently

"The legacies of colonisation, dispossession and
child removal policies, such as psychological distress
and social disorganisation, also appear to be risk
factors" for offending. Troy Allard, Understanding and
preventing Indigenous offending. Indigenous Justice
Clearinghouse Brief no. 9 (December 2010) 1. < http://
www.indigenousjustice.gov.au/briefs/brief009.pdf> at 9
July 2013.

Commonwealth, Royal Commission into Aboriginal
Deaths in Custody, National Report (1991) 1.7.1.

69 Ibid

1.3.3.

See for example, Parliament of Australia, `Report
into Justice Reinvestment', above n 34, 13-15; Harry
Blagg et al, Systemic Racism as a Factor in the Over-
representation of Aboriginal People in the Criminal
Justice System (2005) 36. See also, Parliament
of Australia, House of Representatives Standing
Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Affairs, Inquiry into the high level of involvement
of Indigenous juveniles and young adults in the
criminal justice system, Doing Time Time For Doing:
Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system (2011)
2; Troy Allard, `Indigenous Offending', above n 67.

referred to by key informants to this research as
factors contributing to Koori women's pathway to
prison. Disability, low levels of literacy, disconnection
from family, significant intergenerational family
problems centred on removal, family breakdown
and being exploited by male partners were also
identified as risk factors by key informants.

These are discussed further in the next chapter.

Policy responses to over-representation

For over 20 years, national and Victorian
government policies have examined and attempted
to respond to the over-representation of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islanders in prison. Over time,
there has been an increasing focus on women.

National policies

Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths
in Custody

Established in 1987, the RCIADIC investigated
the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples in juvenile, police and prison custody from
1980 to 1989. Reporting in 1991, the RCIADIC
made 339 recommendations and suggested that to
reduce over-representation, we must address the
underlying issues (disadvantage) and also reform
the criminal justice system itself.

The RCIADIC's recommendations built hope within
the community with the promise that something
was going to be done to deal with the high number
of deaths in custody and over-representation.

However, the harsh reality is that at the time of
Royal Commission 14 per cent of Australia's
prison population was Aboriginal or Torres Strait
Islander.

Twenty-two years later, this has nearly

doubled to 27 per cent.

See for example, key informant interview, Dr Harry Blagg,
23 November 2012; key informant interview, Aboriginal
Family Violence Prevention Legal Service, 13 December
2012; key informant interview, Dame Phyllis Frost Centre,
7 February 2013.

Commonwealth, `RCIADIC National Report', above n 68.

Chris Cunneen, `Punishment: Two Decades of
Penal Expansionism and its Effects on Indigenous
Imprisonment' (2011) 15(1) Australian Indigenous Law
Review 8.

John Walker and David McDonald, `No. 47 The Over-
representation of Indigenous People in Custody in
Australia' (Australian Institute of Criminology, 1995) 3.

Australian Bureau of Statistics, `Prisoners in Australia',
above n 35, 49.