Thread by @KirstiMiller30

In a town like Wilcannia instead of the govt paying a private mob 11k per yr for an indue card & 15k to a private employment service agency to keep an unemployed person in Wilcannia on a WFD activity. How about the govt train & employ these people as age & disability carers.

In Australia,life expectancy for men is 79yrs.Unless you are from Wilcannia in far western NSW, where life expectancy for men is 36.7 yrs & women 42.5 yrs.

Wilcannia personifies government funding priorities across Aust that have effectively criminalised the consequences of marginalisation &failed to address the causes of offending.

This is why our prisons presently warehouse Aboriginal men, women and children as well as the mentally ill.

The 1987-91 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody reported that: “The single significant contributing factor to incarceration is the disadvantaged and unequal position of Aboriginal people in Australian society in every way”.

Governments continue to lavish resources on incarceration despite empirical research that re-offending is better addressed by rehabilitation programs, education and vocational training, stable housing, and employment.

Instead of having people in Wilcannia struggling below the poverty line doing WFD activities by training & employing these people as age & disability carers it would kill many birds with the one stone.

We have to break the cycle of poverty, unemployment and incarceration they are all linked to disadvantage. The more disadvantaged the more crime, the more people locked up it's the revolving door syndrome.

Since 1991 RC, the imprisonment rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has increased 12 times faster than the rate for non-Aboriginal people.

No jurisdiction in Australia - not even the ACT - gaols black males at a rate less than the days of Apartheid South Africa.

Either Aboriginal people are the biggest criminals on earth, genetically pre-disposed to crime, or there's something seriously wrong with our criminal justice system. As the inaugural Governor of Australia's 1st Indigenous Specific Prison, I can assure you it's the later.

The #LNP seem to think Aboriginal people should be able to forget the past, dust themselves off, accept defeat and get on with it. Except, of course, the past is ever present, both in the rate at which my people are gaoled, and in the lingering effects of colonisation.

When you're dealing with segregation, oppression, high unemployment & low income, there are a lot of people who feel like they can't support their families.

They might become depressed, even suicidal, & look for escape in the form of gambling or drug & alcohol abuse. Violence is a by-product of that. Aboriginal People are massively over represented in unemployment rates, poverty, homelessness, & incarceration rates.

The only way we will ever make progress in closing the gaps in the core issues that affect indigenous people being justice, land rights, compensation and the appalling gaoling rate of Aboriginal People.

Australia cannot afford the social, health and economic costs of over-imprisonment of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Australians.Strong, healthy & connected communities are the most effective way to prevent crime & make communities safer, it's not fucking rocket science.

Australia, like our US & British nuclear submarine cousins is fond of locking people up. Australia has returned to mass incarceration we now incarcerate a greater share of the adult population than at any point since the late 19th century the convict days.
medium.com/@kirstiphillip…