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“Australia is now facing an Indigenous incarceration epidemic” - former prime minister Kevin Rudd

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“Australia is now facing an Indigenous incarceration epidemic” - former prime minister Kevin Rudd

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A multifaceted approach including First Nations self-determination, mass movement and protest, and legal reform are all necessary to reduce the incarceration of First Nations men and women

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• 'An ongoing process of choice' in matters relating to First Nations social, cultural and economic needs - Australian Human Rights Commission
•  Key recommendation from the Royal Commission
• 18th Century - colonial project began
• First Nations Australians have been continuously denied access to control over their lives communities and outcome of dispossession
• Needs to be an acknowledgment of this fundamental right
• Focus on justice reinvestment programs key to curbing incarceration rates
• Example includes Maranguka Justice Reinvestment Project in Bourke, New South Wales show that community led initiatives can make real change

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History of Social Change Through Mass Movements

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History of Social Change Through Mass Movements

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• Protest movements create change through strength and mobility
• Black Lives Matter - important starting point in shifting cultural attitudes
• Influenced by George Floyd protests in America - the movement in Australia 2020 centred on First Nations issues
• Movements led and organised by First Nations women - intersect with tackling excesses of capitalism and threat of environmental crisis and relation to rights of issue of land rights

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• Sexual abuse and violence within families - key driver of First Nations incarceration rates
• 90% of incarcerated First Nations women are survivors of family violence
• 70% are sexual abuse survivors
• Preventing violence can reduce incarceration rates of both females and males.

• Wholesale legal reform required with bail amendment allowing:
- culturally sensitive issues
- sentencing to have regard to systematic factors that impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
- compulsory sentencing reports taking these factors into account
- involvement of trained, culturally aware persons

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Extensive research has been conducted and the statistics are ubiquitous. Since the Royal Commission, imprisonment rates of First Nations peoples have continued to increase. The government has failed to listen and implement acceptable strategies, therefore we will continue to see the mass incarceration of First Nations Australians until systematic and structural change occurs.