ANewStolenGeneration:theEpidemic ofIndigenousIncarceration

It almost feels as if you are watching a horror movie. Grainy footage reveals two boysseemingly harmlessly - playing a card game. A few minutes pass, and they are suddenly gasping for air, crying, bending over their toilets, trembling beneath their mattresses. In another room, a boy repeatedly smashes the wall of his cell as gas surrounds him. Outside the cells, prison staff can be heard mocking him, calling him ‘an idiot’ and ‘little f****r.’ Moments later he is dragged out of the cell, hooded and shackled to a chair.

But this is not a horror movie It is CCTV footage from the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Australia that shows the tear-gassing of six boys. This is, however, not an isolated incident. The overrepresentation and brutal treatment of Indigenous children in the criminal justice system is damning evidence that we have never really progressed past the atrocities of the Stolen Generation.

In Australia, the most overwhelming factor that rubs Indigenous children up against the criminal justice system is ongoing historical disadvantage. From the dispossession and forced poverty that was a byproduct of British invasion, to the intergenerational trauma, repression of culture and social exclusion inherited from the Stolen Generation, this disadvantage is a huge reason why Indigenous children are 18 times more likely to be incarcerated than their non-Indigenous counterparts. In addition to the fact that systemic racism in the courts can land a child in detention for throwing tomato sauce around a residential facility kitchen - shockingly, a real example.

Australian state and federal governments take the much-outdated ‘tough-on-juvenilecrime’ stance; claiming that the unjust and cruel incarceration of Indigenous children is for their benefit But, quite frankly, it’s impossible to buy that act The trauma of being strip-searched, tackled, taken before a court, restrained, beaten, tear gassed - from as young as 10 years old - is never forgotten. Indigenous children are more likely to be charged by police, more likely to be refused bail, and more likely to end up in detention; but they are also 3 times more likely to reoffend and be in adult prison before the age of 21. It is a never ending cycle of trauma and violence.

The criminal justice system does not care at all about ‘protecting’ Indigenous children or ‘building them up.’ Rather, it seeks to break them down. It’s a cruel snare, intended to validate and fuel a 200-year racist myth of a supposedly inherent Indigenous ‘criminality.’