I grew up in a regional town in Western Australia that was so divided there was a riot following the funeral of a local Aboriginal man who had died in police custody. It was 1988, the same year we, Aboriginal people were meant to celebrate 200 years since what is euphemistically termed as ‘white settlement’. For me, I was in primary school and it was the first time I had ever started thinking about Aboriginal men being locked up in prison, I had no idea back then that I would end-up as a researcher in that field working at a top university. I did however know that getting a degree at university was a good thing and now I’m in the third year of a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at UNSW’s Kirby Institute.
Aboriginal imprisonment is by any measures tremendously high in Australia with the rate of imprisonment being about 16 times that of nonAboriginal people. There are essentially two ways to lower imprisonment, one, is to reduce the number of people entering prison for the first time, and two, is to reduce the number of people who go back to prison. My PhD work aims to reduce the number of people returning to prison. However, working with people in prison is complex as they have multiple overlapping disadvantages, not to mention a range of health problems. The multiple social and economic factors mean that Aboriginal people are more likely to be imprisoned. These include, but not limited to poor educational attainment, inadequate housing including overcrowding high levels of unemployment and the likely over policing of Aboriginal people. Oh, and racism of course!
Problematic use of alcohol and other drugs (AoD) has been identified as another major contributing factor with the vast majority of men in prison under the influence of AoD at the time of their index offence. In regard to Aboriginal men, 22% percent had been under the influence of alcohol, 21% under the influence of illicit drugs and 29% under the influence of both alcohol and illicit drugs at the time of their index offence. 16