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Criminal justice system 'inherently racist' towards Aboriginal people

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Criminal justice system 'inherently racist' towards Aboriginal peopleWe’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.DismisscloseAdvertisementBy Log in, or to save articles for later.Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeAdvertisementAboriginal elder Phillip Naden was just 28 when he first donned the blue shirt.It was 1995 and the young Wiradjuri man from Dubbo had answered a call-out for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to enter the Queensland police force.He joined to create change as an Aboriginal person. Instead he found a policing culture that he saw unfairly targeting Aboriginal communities.“I was asking, why are we patrolling these areas more for minor offences? Not once would you go into an area that was affluent and lock up five or six people for driving an unregistered vehicle,'' he says. ''There was a different approach for non-Aboriginal communities.”It would be the reason he left the force after five years.“That wasn’t the role I wanted to play. There should be no difference in how you approach a situation on the basis of a person's race.” he says.Twenty-five years on he says the policing culture has come a long way. But this week he found himself asking how far it still had to go.On Monday , being kicked to the ground by a NSW Police officer. The incident is under an internal investigation and there have been Advertisement"I truly hope this is a turning point within our community and [for] the police,” the boy’s sister said in an emotional family address to the media this week.Naden says the video should be a reminder to police officers, “that they are just as accountable to the community as offenders”.The video surfaced days after fiery race riots erupted across all 50 states in the US, following the alleged murder of Minneapolis man George Floyd at the hands of police.NSW authorities were quick to attempt to dampen , saying Australia was “not the United States of America" and “Sydney is not Minnesota".Professor Chris Cunneen, a criminology expert from the University of Technology Sydney, says Australia may not be the US “but in a lot of ways, it’s worse”.In the past 10 years the number of Aboriginal people charged by police in NSW has increased by more than 67 per cent. For non-Indigenous Australians the increase has been just 8 per cent, according to new figures from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.“I didn’t expect to see that sort of increase over ten years,” says BOCSAR executive director Jackie Fitzgerald. “Particularly when those increases are happening in the face of falling crime rates.”For example, she says there has been a “massive” decline in overall thefts in NSW, “but for adult Aboriginals in the past 10 years thefts have doubled”.In the same period there was a 130 per cent increase in Aboriginal people charged with intimidation and stalking offences, which was largely linked to an increase in proactive policing targeting domestic violence.While there is evidence that proactive policing reduces crime, it also results in more people entering the criminal justice system, which has a flow-on effect for Aboriginal people.“The cumulative effect of lots of police, court and prison contacts all compounds to deliver a poor result for Aboriginal people,” Fitzgerald says.Results in the 10 years to March were more promising for Aboriginal juveniles, with arrests leading to court down 20 per cent.BOCSAR found that the number of Aboriginal people in prison in NSW increased by 47 per cent in the seven years to March this year, while an Aboriginal defendant is 11 per cent more likely to be refused bail by a court.Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday also showed Indigenous people in NSW were “All along Aboriginal people’s path through the criminal justice system, there are forks in the road at which they are more likely to be on the receiving end of decisions that increase their likelihood of ending up in prison. A large part of this is the nature of offences and longer criminal histories.” Fitzgerald says.So does that make the current criminal justice system inherently racist towards Aboriginal people?“The short answer is, yes,” says Cunneen.Since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, he says “inquiry after inquiry” has found the same thing: it doesn’t respond to Indigenous needs.“If the system itself is supposed to be the linchpin in terms of assessing evidence and imposing a penalty ... then it’s part of an overall system that’s failing.”Cunneen says even the best magistrates in the world could only do so much with current sentencing processes, which Aboriginal people routinely face: fines, which many can’t afford to pay, or prison.“When they are sent to prison, somewhere between half and two-thirds are going to reoffend. It’s hardly a bastion of rehabilitation. I don’t think it’s working and that’s putting it lightly,” he says.Aboriginal elder Naden says he doesn’t believe the system is racist but that more community-led initiatives were needed to address the over-representation of Indigenous people.One such initiative that has resulted in success is circle sentencing, an alternative sentencing method for Aboriginal offenders, in which a local court magistrate works with Aboriginal elders, victims and the offender’s family to determine a sentence.The practice is used for lower-end offences such as malicious damage or drink driving. The offender must plead guilty in order to qualify.“It’s a consultation, a yarning circle. And it’s certainly not a scapegoat to not go to jail. Members of the circle have the power to make a recommendation for jail,” says Naden, who is a member of the Dubbo program.“If you come up against an eminent elder, highly respected in the community, it puts more pressure on you as an offender to try and rehabilitate yourself than walking into a courtroom and being sentenced for two months.”Redfern elder Shane Phillips runs a through the Tribal Warrior Association. He says generational change has to be the focus if we are to “look at our own patch”.“There is a problem here, we can’t deny. The Surry Hills police incident wasn’t an isolated incident. But we have got to find a way through … because it can’t just be us seeing the blue and them seeing the black.”The most important news, analysis and insights delivered to your inbox at the start and end of each day. Sign up to and .Log in, or to save articles for later. is a state political reporter with TheSydney Morning Herald.Advertisement

Criminal justice system 'inherently racist' towards Aboriginal peopleWe’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.DismisscloseAdvertisementBy Log in, or to save articles for later.Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeAdvertisementAboriginal elder Phillip Naden was just 28 when he first donned the blue shirt.It was 1995 and the young Wiradjuri man from Dubbo had answered a call-out for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to enter the Queensland police force.He joined to create change as an Aboriginal person. Instead...

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Lucy Cormack

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Criminal justice system 'inherently racist' towards Aboriginal people

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