I recently came across an article on the ABC news website posted in June 2011 that described Australia’s indigenous youth crime rates at a level of “National crisis”. This really shocked me as I assumed that these rates would be declining with the improvement of the treatment of Indigenous Australians over time. I decided to look into this topic more as I was interested to hear both sides of the story.
This table represents the amounts in 100,000’s of people aged 10-17 incarcerated into juvenile detention centres around Australia not including Tasmania, between 1994 and 2002.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/cfi/41-60/cfi060.aspx
The article I mentioned previosly on the ABC news website quotes that Aboriginal youths are 28 times more likely to be detained than non indigenous youths. Why is this? This really provoked some thought in my mind. Are the aboriginal youths really this hostile or does the Australian justice system and police authorities treat the aboriginal youths differently?
To begin my investigation I watched an old episode (1992) of “The first Australians” which was called “Special Treatment”. The episode looks at the special treatment of Indigenous Australians by police and the bad relationship between and defiance of the indigenous youths and the police authority. It discusses the unfair treatment of the youths by the police, in the form of random police searches based on suspicions, and the constant harassing abusing of Aboriginal people. There have been many horrible cases in the past where aboriginal youths have been arrested, beaten, and in some cases even killed for crimes they did not even commit. Unfortunately Aboriginal people have suffered decades of neglect, and I can only imagine the sadness and fear that some aboriginal communities must associate with their local police authority.
Something that really stuck in my mind from this documentary was something a police chief said. He said how Australia’s war was never recognised like the American wars or the Korean wars. Australia’s war was fought by the police, and the aboriginals that fought back were criminalised. The police fought as the military force of imperialism. Australia’s history definitely starts Australia’s police authority and our indigenous population off on a bad note. It affects their relationship negatively to this very day. The country was built on the concept of invasion and colonisation and that will never change and the indigenous Australians will never forget that.
So what can Australia do right now to change this and reconcile, and to repair the relationships between the police authority and the indigenous youths and communities? In the article on the ABC news website it states that the Federal parliamentary committee has made 40 wide ranging recommendations to change these statistics such as better police training, incentives for school attendance and the introduction of mentoring programmes.
Liberal committee member Sharman Stone says mentoring is the way forward.
“If a lot of the Indigenous young people have someone to look up to, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous, that can help them find their way, their pathway through to life beyond offending,” she said. The article also states that there has been discussion to introduce Indigenous representation in Parliament to give youth a voice. I think there should be a nationwide push to train some aboriginal policemen and women into the force so as there is an equality of race in Australias authoritive system. Police in South Africa imposed strict curfews to all youths at night time. Is Australia at this point? These are all things that Australia could be trying to lower the indigenous youth crime rates.
As I did a bit more research I realised this was a massive topic and I had only discovered the tip of the iceberg. The rise in indigenous crime rates are interrelated with many other factors.
A 2009 NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research study draws many conclusions, such as finding that the rate of indigenous incarceration in NSW (which holds more than one third of the national prisoner population) rose 48% between 2001 and 2008 BUT the rate of indigenous court appearances and the rate of indigenous convictions both fell in the same period. This means that that none of the rise was the result of any change in patterns of indigenous people actually offending. Rather, the entire increase could be explained by the increased use of imprisonment (rather than non-custodial options), longer prison sentences, increased rates of bail refusal and longer periods on remand.
What makes me even sadder is that these negative relationships between Australias police authority and the indigenous community is still a major factor in today’s society. Just the other day I was reading an article in the 22nd August “The Koori Mail”, about a man who had been beaten by the police guards as they were moving him from one cell to another (after being arrested for allegations that were then later dropped). The police officers in question then lied under oath about the situation and are now being investigated by the Police Integrity Commission. The victim states “Hopefully some things will start changing… and no one will have to go through what I have gone through”. The victims fathers stated “I hope this brings about changes in the way police deal with peolple”.
This topic is really controversial and provokes quite a lot of questions. There are always two sides to a story and Australia will hopefully keep working at the reconciliation between Indigenous and non indigenous Australians until there is true equality and peace.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-21/indigenous-youth-crime-rates-a-national-crisis/2765676
katewatts 