COMMUNITY SPIRIT POLICE AWARDS
Thursday, 27th June 2013 from 11am-1pm
Koorie Youth Council Korin Gamadji Institute
Wayne Muir CEO VALS
I acknowledge traditional owners and pay my respects to elders past and present, including
elders here today.
Thank you for having me here today and congratulations to you all for the good work you
have done.
We appreciate your efforts. Each of you can make a difference simply by going about your
job in a way that is cognizant of the impacts of the actions you take.
Aboriginal Victorians, just like all other Victorians want a better future for our young people.
We want our children to be learners and earners and this is happening.
More children are staying on till year 12 and more are going on to university.
The number of our young people completing Year 12 has risen from 56% in 2006 to 62% in
2011 and of these, close to 40% progressed to university, the highest ever. Granted, the
year 12 completions have a way to go to reach the State average of 86% but we are making
very good progress.
There is a growing middle class in Aboriginal Australia/Victoria: Young people who have
leadership capacity and are not weighed down by some of the baggage my generation has
carried. (To paraphrase Mick Dodson).
We want them to know their culture, be proud of it and share it with all Australians. Our
culture is central to who we are as people. The culture of our first peoples can further enrich
Australia.
Australia has much to be proud of. Our democracy is based on a fundamental belief in
justice
But what does that justice mean?
My community, like most traditional societies, sees restoration of harmony as the objective
of a justice system.
It is through that lens that I would like to talk about the justice system today and in turn I
would like to ask you to think about how you can do your jobs in a way that restores social
harmony.
While we are doing better in many ways far too many of our mob is struggling. They are the
ones that really feel the hard end of a ‘tough on law’ regime.
In 2011-12 young Aboriginal people were 13.3 times more likely to be on a community
based service order and 17.4 times more likely to be in detention than non-Aboriginal young
people. Our young people are also more likely to be in detention at a younger age - that is
10 to 14 years of age, than other kids. While Victoria does better than other jurisdictions we
must be vigilant to ensure that our rates trend down not up.
So what has happened in the lives of these young people?






They have in all likelihood come from an environment of inadequate housing, poor
health, low educational and training achievement, and a lack of employment
opportunities
Their parents and they themselves are more likely to have had substance abuse
problems
Their parents are more likely to have mental health problems
They are more likely to have witnessed family violence
They are more likely to have been in the child protection system, particularly
residential care. In fact there is a pathway from residential care to youth detention
that needs far more attention than it gets. Adequate data collections would be a
good start!
And they or their parents are more likely to have experienced institutionalised child
sexual abuse, which has an impact that continues through to future generations.
As Judge Cullity a former Chair of the Youth Parole Board said of all young offenders "They
have been very substantially offended against by a number of society's ills before they
ever offended against society."
It seems pretty obvious to me that humane, rehabilitative approaches are the way to go!
But over recent times the justice debate has switched to a law and order agenda,
characterized by ‘getting tough on crime’. Mandatory sentencing, is one example.
There is real potential for that agenda to set young people on a pathway to criminalization.
This is the perverse outcome that we don’t want.
In contrast a justice reinvestment approach yields social and economic benefits.
Justice reinvestment is fundamentally about reinvesting the money that we are currently
spending on the construction and operation of an expanding prison network in more
effective programs of crime prevention and control.
Surprisingly Texas, a state we often think of as conservative, faced with needing to spend
half a billion dollars on new prisons instead reinvested much of that in diversionary and
rehabilitative programs. None of the new prisons were built and they are likely to close a
further two. They estimate they have saved the state about $2 billion and crime has not
soared. Indeed it has trended down.
And recently Austrlai’s National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee commissioned
research which calculated that state governments save more than $110,000 every time an
Aboriginal offender with drug or alcohol addiction enters rehabilitation instead of jail.
I would contend that there are far greater savings in terms of people able to live fulfilling
and productive lives and to be good parents to their children, and the resulting community
cohesion is far greater.
So I would ask you to think hard before you:
Load up the number of charges against a young person – this practice decreases the
likelihood of bail and in turn increases numbers in remand, the beginning of the
criminalising impact of incarceration.
This is how it happens:
a. Police might make multiple charges many of which are subsequently
dropped.
b. The severity of charges can be out of all proportion to the alleged offence.
c. Multiple charges build up a file on clients which gives an impression of an
extensive history of multiple offending, notwithstanding the fact that at some
point many of these charges are dropped.
d. Possibly more serious is the practice of charges that are disproportionate to
the offence, for example the charging of the Swan Hill woman with fraud for
fare evasion
e. These practices impact on the likelihood of an alleged offender getting bail,
and thus contribute to the number of Aboriginal prisoners in remand.
Not only that, overcharging has made the justice system inefficient!!
So continue with your good work and try and influence others to follow your lead.
We have a long way to go and much work to do. We must be willing to reflect and
criticise and do better. Equally we must celebrate what is good as we are doing
today.
Thanks
Wayne Muir
_____________________________________________________________________