Australia’s Indigenous incarceration rate has risen by 52% over the past decade, exacerbated by a lack of culturally appropriate rehabilitation programs, a new report commissioned by the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration has found.
The report found Indigenous prisoners frequently did not qualify for rehabilitation programs because their sentences were too short; that programs provided had too few places to accommodate them and were often culturally inappropriate; and that correctional authorities were not transparent or forthcoming with data about the programs.
There was evidence that “rehabilitation programs that fail to acknowledge language, culture, traditions and current life situations of Indigenous offenders are unlikely to be effective and could also contribute to further offending”, the authors of the report from the Australian National University wrote.
“Overcrowding can also worsen or adversely affect the mental health of inmates and seriously affect the ability to control crime and violence within the prison walls,” the report said.
“It can therefore create a dangerous environment for both inmates and prison staff, which becomes counterproductive for any rehabilitation efforts.”
The authors of the report from the Australian National University, Dr Clarke Jones and Wiradjuri woman Dr Jill Guthrie, will present the findings on Thursday at the Indigenous Justice Conference in Alice Springs.
The Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration president, Justice Robert Mazza, has responded to the report by criticising the lack of transparency of correctional authorities, with the researchers being denied access to key statistical data around Indigenous participation in and responses to rehabilitation.
“Primary data was not provided by the correctional jurisdictions around Australia,” the authors wrote in the report, titled “Efficacy, accessibility and adequacy of prison rehabilitation programs for Indigenous offenders across Australia”.
“Over the past four years, several approaches have been made by the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration to the Corrective Services Administrators Council to obtain permission to approach the various correctional jurisdictions for support and cooperation, however, all were unsuccessful.”
Last month the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced a royal commission into juvenile detention in the Northern Territory following damning footage revealed by the ABC’s Four Corners program of youth being abused in the Don Dale centre. However, Jones said the royal commission needed to be broadened to examine Indigenous incarceration throughout Australia.
“Greater transparency through a royal commission will allow greater accountability and proper expert evaluation of Indigenous incarceration,” Jones said.
“For some reason, very little has been done since the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, and the number of deaths in custody and youths entering custody is still alarming.”
Indigenous Australians accounted for 27% of Australia’s prison population, he said, despite comprising just 2.5% of the general population as of the 2011 census, he said.
His findings follow those published in July by the University of Technology Sydney which found Indigenous Australians are being unfairly sentenced for their crimes because of the racist and prejudicial views held by some members of the judicial system.
The Lowitja Institute CEO, Romlie Mokak, said research he was involved in with the now defunct National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee found that rehabilitating Indigenous offenders in the community rather than jailing them resulted in an average $100,000 per person saving.
“In conducting our study we had similar issues to the researchers who authored this report in accessing data from corrections, and it took us a very long time to conduct,” Mokak told Guardian Australia.
“I strongly believe in the transparency of programs, and also the open and transparent evaluation of those programs, which we know is just not occurring.”
A Centre for Independent Studies report released on Tuesday found just 8% of government and non-government programs aimed at Indigenous people had been evaluated.
“We must do more about ensuring evaluations are embedded within every program funded and delivered to Indigenous people,” Mokak said.
“More of our people are being locked up, the costs are going through the roof, and the flow-on effects for our communities and families are crippling. The corrections system is having the opposite effect of what is needed, and we need to examine how as Indigenous people we can empower ourselves to engage with the corrections system in a transparent relationship.”
