Reducing Aboriginal Imprisonment: An Offence-Specific Study

Across Australia, a significantly large proportion of Aboriginal prisoners are incarcerated for offences subsumed under two categories: Acts Intended to Cause Injury (AICI or ANZSOC 02) and Offences Against Justice Procedures (OAJP or ANZSPC 15). The behaviours under AICI and OAJP span serious and less serious points on the offending continuum and, on that count, invite serious and sustained inquiry of the social, economic, cultural and legal issues surrounding such offending.

In plain language, the Reducing Aboriginal Imprisonment project aims to understand the custodial experiences and challenges of life after prison in a sample of Aboriginal male and female prisoners (drawn from South Australia (SA) and the Northern Territory (NT)) who have been repeatedly incarcerated for assault and/or offences against justice procedures.

This research project is grounded in the notion that Indigenous knowledge and voices are essential for understanding and responding to issues driving Aboriginal over-incarceration.

Project aims

To statistically capture the “movement” of high rate repeat offenders across AICI and OAJP categories over time;
To capture—through focus groups, in-depth interviews, and intense immersion in key communities from which Aboriginal prisoners (male and female) emerge and to which they return—an appropriate range of high-rate repeat offender stories “behind” the AICI and OAJP statistics;
To discern the day-to-day barriers to successful re-entry and desistance from crime for high-rate AICI and OAJP offenders.

The project consists of three stages

Stage 1: Departmental data collection and analysis; prisonbased focus groups

Data from the NT Department of Attorney-General and Justice and the SA Department for Correctional Services will depict the incarceration and release episodes in relation to AICI and OAJP offences for the target cohort. Additionally, the data will help identify the key locations Aboriginal people return to post release in these jurisdictions.

Focus groups will play a central role in the formative stages of the project by informing a broadbased understanding of the key issues facing Aboriginal prisoners in a diverse range of custodial and geographical settings. These discussions will be held in correctional facilities in SA and NT and will explore the general nature of AICI and OAJP offending and the contexts surrounding breaches, arrest, convictions and reincarceration, as well the (un)availability of relevant services, family supports, and education/employment options within and beyond custody. The focus groups are intended to be informal, semi-structured group discussions and are guided by the Indigenous style of conversation and storytelling known as ‘yarning’.

Stage 2: Place-based immersion; manual perusal of prison and parole files

Place based immersion will explore the suburbs/towns where Aboriginal prisoners reside prior to imprisonment as well as the contexts to which they return following release from custody. This component will focus on the level and type of tangible supports for offender reintegration, including assistance meeting dynamic criminogenic needs and the more basic needs of housing, education, employment, transport, and so forth. The perspectives of key Aboriginal service providers will be of particular importance. The PhD project embedded within the research will complement such work and will focus primarily on the quality of legal support for Aboriginal people in key communities, as well as the challenges and impacts of policing in such locations.

Parole files and case files will be accessed for consenting participants that meet the selection criteria for in-depth interviews. Case files detail prisoner’s day-to-day activities (including rehabilitation programs) while incarcerated, whereas parole files contain information regarding the success (or otherwise) of community integration including the extent of compliance with supervision orders, periods of (un)employment, and engagement with, and availability of, support services. This information will help to ensure the type of questions posed during the interview stage are based as far as practicable in the realities of Aboriginal prisoners’ lives.

Stage 3: In-depth interviews

In-depth interviews will be conducted with Aboriginal men and women who have an extensive record of incarceration and release episodes involving AICI and OAJP and who permit access to their prison/parole file. The interviews will establish the basic details of each individual’s childhood and early adulthood and will elicit information about key turning points in their life course. The key aim is to capture the lived experiences of Aboriginal people and their struggles to desist from particular types of offending. Interviews will also be designed to capture the factors that might have helped such persons desist from crime for particular periods. In short, the barriers to and enablers of successful reintegration will be the key focal points of interviews.

Anticipated outcomes

This project will advance knowledge of the causes of, and means for ameliorating, Aboriginal over-incarceration. The research deliberately locates Aboriginal people at the heart of the study and takes a “bottom up” approach to discerning the factors impacting their well-being within and beyond custody. This project will enable the development of nuanced and fit for purpose rehabilitative and re-integrative initiatives that specifically take account of the personal, familial, cultural, geographic and socio-economic factors that derail desistance from crime for a significant proportion of Aboriginal offenders.

Ethics

Ethics approval for this project will occur in three stages. Approval for stage 1 has been granted by the following committees:

Social and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee of Flinders University – Project Number 8274
Central Australian Human Research Ethics Committee of the Centre for Remote Health – CA- 19-3349
The Human Research Ethics Committee of the Northern Territory Department of Health and the Menzies School of Health Research – 2019-3331
Northern Territory Department of Justice
South Australian Department of Correctional Services Research and Evaluation Management Committee

Advisory group

A project advisory group constituted by key Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons will play an important role in guiding this
research.

Project team

Professor Mark Halsey - Chief Investigator

Associate Professor David Bright - Chief Investigator

Ms Jenna Mizzi - PhD Candidate

Ms Paige Fletcher - Research Assistant

This project has the in-principle support of the Chief Executive, SA
Department for Correctional Services, and the Commissioner, NT Correctional Services.