Suchergebnisse

The Marg Barry Memorial Lecture celebrates the contribution of a woman for whom social justice was integral and essential to good social arrangements. Social Justice disappeared almost entirely from Australian public life and discourse between 1995 and 2007. This also marked an increase in income inequality, and increased disadvantage and exclusion for those experiencing multiple difficulties in their lives. Not only is this morally repugnant but this growing inequality meant worse social and health outcomes for everyone. Evidence has been accumulating that societies with institutional social justice arrangements do better for everyone, including the wealthy, than those rewarding the growth in the gap between rich and poor. Although the Rudd government once again embraced the notion of fairness in the form of social inclusion, the revival of social justice, that is ensuring systemic and structural social arrangements to improve equality, as a core political and social value, should be a goal for us all.

Abstract: Private for‐profit prison corporations are expanding in Australia faster than in any other country. These corporations are based in the USA and form part of the correctionscommercial complex. It is the contention of this paper, from observations in NSW, Australia, that the nature of these newly internationalised private prison corporations is neo‐colonialist, both economically and culturally. It can be compared with the expansion of the nuclear power industry by transnational US corporations in the 1960s and 1970s and other transnationals more recently. Using this perspective, the appropriateness of transnational private for‐profit prison corporations running prisons in Australia is severely questioned.

Crime rates are generally decreasing and governments in Australia (as elsewhere) have committed to reducing recidivism. However, incarceration rates of certain groups continue to rise, including Indigenous and racialised peoples, those experiencing poverty, mental health issues, addiction, homelessness and people with cognitive disability. A large proportion are in custody for minor offences and/or not yet sentenced; however, political leaders have continued to defend their detention on the grounds of risk to community safety. The sudden drop in people incarcerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, without a commensurate rise in crime rates, highlighted the degree to which incarceration rates are a matter of policy decisions. For a time, public health priorities dominated criminal legal policies. Evidence on the social determinants of health that people experiencing social, economic, political and environmental disadvantage are more likely to experience poorer health outcomes has led to acceptance globally that public health policies must address systemic factors and not just focus on individual behaviour. In this article, we propose that a conceptual framework of the social determinants of justice could valuably inform efforts to reduce the criminalisation and incarceration of targeted and disadvantaged groups.

The stigmatisation, control, criminalisation and incarceration of people with disability have a long history. While in recent decades there has been increasing commitment to the rights of people with disabilities by governments in western nations, the over-representation of people with mental and cognitive disability in criminal justice systems has continued. Although there are similarities amongst Western jurisdictions in regard to the treatment of people with disability in justice systems, there are particularities in Australia that will be drawn out in this article. We argue that disadvantaged people with mental and cognitive disability are being managed by and entrenched in criminal justice systems across Australia's six states and two territories, including so-called diversionary and therapeutic measures that appear to accommodate their disability. In the absence of early and appropriate diagnosis, intervention and support in the community, some disadvantaged and poor persons with mental and cognitive disability, in particular Indigenous Australians, are being systematically criminalised. Criminal justice agencies and especially youth and adult prisons have become normalised as places of disability management and control. Drawing on research that focuses in detail on the jurisdictions of the Northern Territory and New South Wales, we argue for a reconstruction of the understanding of and response to people with these disabilities in the criminal justice system.

Imprisonment in Australia has been a growing industry and large numbers of vulnerable people find themselves in a state of serial incarceration. Women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in particular have experienced rapidly expanding imprisonment rates over recent decades. Our argument is this article is relatively straightforward: to understand contemporary penal culture and in particular its severity and excess in relation to Indigenous people and women, we need to draw upon an understanding of the dynamics of colonial patriarchy. Although at a micro level, specific legislation and policy changes have negatively impacted on the imprisonment of vulnerable groups, it is within a broader context of the strategies and techniques of colonial patriarchy that we can understand why it is that particular social groups appear to become the targets of penal excess.

The NSW Government has recently announced the establishment of a number of accommodation and reintegration services for offenders leaving prison and for others subject to non-custodial or parole orders. This shift recognises the established importance of post-release accommodation and individual case management for ex-prisoners as important steps towards addressing the high rates of re-incarceration of people in NSW. However, like the vast majority of such services, this latest measure does not sufficiently respond to the specific issues facing Aboriginal women, who are experiencing the fastest rate of increase of all groups of prisoners across Australia. Aboriginal women have higher rates of return to prison, higher rates of social and physical disadvantage, and higher numbers of dependent children than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Their specific experiences of intersectional discrimination on the grounds of their race and gender remain largely invisible to policy makers. This paper draws on the principles of decolonisation, human rights and social justice alongside relevant research on post-release services and support to propose the development of an Aboriginal-women specific transitional model to assist in redressing the cycle of reincarceration for Aboriginal women in NSW.