Looking out: Stop these tragic deaths

Stop these tragic deaths

“Aboriginal inmates have been victimised, intimidated and ... abused.
[Their] ... basic human rights have been defiled and are being defiled
on a daily basis.” — Green Left Weekly

An Aboriginal prisoner, Kerry Jones, had to go on a 27-day hunger strike
just to get the attention of the administrator who runs the Goulburn Jail.
Jones, and other prisoners like him, seek only humane treatment. Why is
that so hard for Australian prison administrators and officers to understand?

The frightening number of Aboriginal deaths in Australia's prison system
should be getting a lot more attention. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal
Deaths in Custody, though very well intended, was at best a lackadaisical
response to a life and death situation.

Moreover, when you consider that fewer than a million Aborigines are
left in Australia, along with the number of Aboriginal deaths in custody
and the number of Aborigines being hauled off to prison daily, a less than
subtle pattern emerges of what could easily be called administrative genocide.

It appears to many, myself included, that the Australian government
is dragging its feet. The royal commission placed special emphasis on educational
programs that would clarify Aboriginal custom and culture for prison officers.
Unfortunately, only a few of these educational initiatives have gone beyond
the drawing board. Professor Jeffrey von Arx is the director of Georgetown
University's Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies (in Washington,
DC). Perhaps he can shed some light on this matter.

****

In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made
recommendations for alleviating the disproportionate number of Aboriginal
deaths in prison, youth remands and police custody. Some of these recommendations
have been implemented, and yet the number of Aboriginal deaths in custody
has increased, both absolutely and as a percentage of overall deaths in
custody.

Amnesty International, in a report issued in June 1997, criticised governments
at the federal, state and territorial level for failing to implement many
of the commission's recommendations, and so permitting a situation to develop
in which “ill-treatment, or lack of care amounting to cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment may have [in some cases] contributed to a death
in custody”.

Last July, a ministerial summit of state and federal officials and representatives
of Aboriginal peoples met in Canberra to address the problem and agreed
on a number of new policy initiatives.

Why have the recommendations been so slow in implementation? As always
when addressing a complex social and cultural problem, there is not a single
answer.

The high incidence of police contact with Aborigines, especially with
youth, over minor infractions, raised in the Amnesty report the question
of police targeting of Aborigines. These encounters have too often resulted
in the death or injury of Aboriginal youth, or begun a vicious cycle of
involvement with the legal system that is a contributing factor to the
disproportionate incarceration of Aborigines.

Once in custody or prison, Amnesty International has stated, proper
care has too often not been exercised by those with responsibility for
the welfare of prisoners. At times, this has been a consequence of indifference,
ignorance or neglect; at other times, the problems have been structural:
how, for example, to deal with custody of Aborigines in isolated and understaffed
police stations when 24-hour supervision is difficult to achieve?

Both the Amnesty report and the ministerial summit emphasised the need
to remedy underlying causes. The summit committed itself to coordination
of funding and service delivery for indigenous programs and services to
deal with social and economic factors like unemployment, inferior education
and housing, and inadequate health, in the belief that they are at the
root of many encounters between Aborigines and the police.

In the end, the solution must be a cultural one. One of the most important
ways of dealing with the terrible problem of Aboriginal deaths in custody
would be to return to Aborigines, as much as possible — and certainly
in the case of minor offences — control over adjudication and punishment
in their own communities.

Native American communities have long had the ability to deal with misdemeanours
among their own people, and it would seem that Australia would do well
to find ways of empowering Aboriginal communities to judge and punish their
own as the best way to stop these tragic deaths.

[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes
letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor
Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison,
PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.] Brandon and his friends are trying
to raise funds to pay for a lawyer for his appeal. If you can help, please
make cheques payable to the Brandon Astor Jones Defence Account and post
to 41 Neutral St, North Sydney NSW 2060, or any Commonwealth Bank, account
No. 2127 1003 7638.]

From GLW issue 324