The contents of the Health Effects from Incarceration of Indigenous Australians page were merged into Indigenous Australians and crime on 9 September 2020. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
This article was nominated for deletion on 20 December 2019. The result of the discussion was keep. |
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I think the idea of illustrating an article about "Indigenous Australians and crime" with a historical image of pretty much any Indigenous Australians - ones whom, to our knowledge, were not criminals or involved in crime - is a poor judgement and I am removing it. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
This page is pure racist rant, by the same people who commited genocide against natives in Australia and all over the world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.121.73.183 (talk) 17:45, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
I have done quite a big upgrade on this article just to bring it up to some basic standards, but my feeling is that the topic itself is rather too complex, and too much written about, to be adequately represented in a reasonably sized article. I'm sure it can be improved greatly with a bit more time and effort, but better done by someone who works in the field or with more familiarity with the literature than I have, so I'm leaving it now. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 05:01, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
The initial two paragraphs of this article imply that the indigenous incarceration rate is somehow a by-product of systemic racism without any citation or statistics to back that claim.
Claims of police brutality are also unsubstantiated and in this case could be viewed as offensive. This should be removed unless there is data to support it.
The incarceration rate and proportion of prison population is a reflection of the same disproportional occurrence of criminal acts being committed within the indigenous community.
The violent crime section contains statistics that seem to directly conflict with the opening two paragraphs.
There needs to be mention and emphasis places on a few contributing factors:
1. Alcohol and substance abuse play a larger role than any "systemic" issues and this should be at least mentioned in the introduction. The rate of drug and alchohol abuse and dependency within the indigenous community is wildly disproportional to the rates found in the broader population, or indeed any other specific demographic within.
2. Most of the criminal offences occur in remote and isolated communities where both the purpertrator and victim come from an indigenous background. This goes a long way to explaining why both figures are disproportional to the broader population.
3. The high rate of domestic incidents occur in and around the home and both victim and perpetrator are commonly related or known to each other. Both points 1and 2 listed above also act as a key driver of this statistic (substance abuse combined with isolation).
If we want to actually help ease the pain and suffering our Aboriginal community experiences due to the high incarceration rate within their own community, we must keep the conversation honest and grounded in truth.
British colonisation and the policies that continued/continue to affect our indigenous population must also play a role here, but cannot be used as a crutch to avoid dealing with some of the more obvious and directly harmful issues at play.
If the perpetrator and victims are largely coming from the same communities, it has a compounding effect as criminal justice must also be served and witnesses interviewed, traumatising that group while leaving outsiders unaffected.
This in itself can lead to a feeling of resentment, isolation and persecution.
Combined with the very real remnants of systematic long term oppression, this feeds back into the feeling of hopelessness and leads to further substance abuse and offenses.
And so the cycle will continue. Ben Fullgrabe (talk) 22:13, 29 February 2020 (UTC)