Arresting incarceration: Pathways out of Indigenous imprisonment

When the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody produced its final report, it concluded that the high rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody stemmed from the over-representation of Aboriginal people in prisons and police lockups.

The Commission made more than 300 recommendations, most of which were designed to deal with this problem. The Keating Government accepted all bar one of the recommendations and allocated $672 million (in today's dollars) to put them into effect.

Instead of going down, though, the rate of Indigenous imprisonment went up. The rate of Indigenous imprisonment is now more than 50 per cent higher than it was at the time of the Royal Commission.

In this paper Dr Weatherburn argues that the Commission's analysis of Indigenous over-representation in prison was flawed and the Keating Government response to the Commission's recommendations was misconceived. Options for reducing Indigenous imprisonment are discussed.

Biography:

Don Weatherburn has been Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research since 1988. He was awarded a Public Service Medal in January 1998, an Alumni Award for Community Service by the University of Sydney in 2000 and made a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2006. He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Science at the University of New South Wales and is the author of three books and more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, reports, and book chapters on crime and criminal justice.