Answer To: Assignment:How well do prisons in Australia meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander...
Amandeep answered on Apr 28 2021
A very important challenge related to criminal law is the over-representation of indigenous people. They are represented 12 times their level in general population of Australians. They are imprisoned for violent offences more than their counterparts, i.e., non-indigenous people. Even then, there is no national study to re-offend the extent to which these people are returned to prison.
The indigenous prisoners in Australia are over-represented, hiding the way they are treated and their health and social needs. Certain areas need to be considered in this matter including how the prison services are looking at this issue. Indigenous notifies both Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.
With the help of corrective measures taken by administrators in Australia and New Zealand, a research took place by the Australian Institute of Criminology, filling a gap among the knowledge of re-offending in indigenous offenders. The data taken from Australian jurisdictions and incarceration of 8,938 indigenous males for violent offences for over a two year period, it was found out that these people are more frequently admitted to incarceration when compared to their Australian non-indigenous counterparts. The arrest is made for the same kind of offence related to assault; time and again. Re-incarceration states how well attempts of re-integration are succeeding into the community.
Re-integration refers to a process or a method of helping offenders to adopt a non-offending lifestyle in their community post-release. A number of barriers arise to successful re-integration and these are made worse when it is a case of indigenous offenders. Due to the disadvantages faced by the community, they have very little resources, support system and services and opportunities to adopt non-offending lifestyle due to which they find offending, a desirable or even a necessary response.
Prisoners: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Prisoners differentiate and are not the same groups of people. While Aboriginals are the original people belonging to mainland Australia, Torres Strait Islander are the people from 274 islands of North Australia in Torres Strait.
According to the statistics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners comprise of twenty-seven percent of Australia’s prisoner’s population, but only two point four percent of the Australia’s population is comprised of these groups. The reason behind these values is that the rate of imprisonment of these two groups is 1,914 per 100,000 of the population getting imprisoned at any time, while; in case of the mainland population, only 129 per 100,000 are imprisoned. Thus, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Prisoners are incarcerated 15 times more likely than a mainland citizen. Between 1990 and 1995, aboriginal people were continued to get arrested at a high rate and in huge numbers. In 1988, 1992 and 2005, national police surveys were conducted by Australian Institute of Criminology. There was a decline in their arrest rate between 1988 and 1992.
The gap is quite unfair between the incarceration of indigenous and non-indigenous imprisonment. The figures state that on a particular given day on an average, there are approximately, 10,000 indigenous adults, 1,000 women, 500 youth in detention and police cells, all indigenous[footnoteRef:1]. Incarceration not only leads to loss of culture, but also, loss of identity and connection to land. [1: ABS (2016). Corrective Services, Australia, June Quarter 2016. Canberra: ABS; AIHW (2017). Youth justice in Australia 2015–16.]
There has also been an increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners in the last decade. Despite the number of adult prisoners nationally had decreased, the number of indigenous Australian prisoners had continued to grow. From July, 2019 to June, 2020 there were about 12,456 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners in Australia and in 2010-2011, about 7,507.
These people experience a number of health issues[footnoteRef:2] and are at a risk of illness and injury after release. Many Aboriginals have mental illness or a cognitive disability or a substance abuse disorder or a chronic condition. Those in custody have a higher rate of mental illness, particularly, than those who are not in custody. They are affected by colonisation, dispossession, having children stolen, discrimination and institutionalisation. [2: Indig D, McEntyre E, Page J, Ross B. 2009 inmate health survey: aboriginal health report. Sydney: Justice Health; 2011.]
As we already know that, Australians are over-represented in the criminal justice system of Australian state and territory, they make up only for a small number of the total population but a large number of the prison population.
Another shocking fact is that the over-representation of Indigenous Australians not only limits to adults but include juveniles also. The juvenile rate of imprisonment has declined by thirty-three...