‘Pendulum has shifted’ on Indigenous incarceration and ‘can’t and won’t swing back’: Attorney-General

THE ‘pendulum has shifted’ on action to address the unacceptably high rates of Aboriginal incarceration in the NT and ‘can’t and won’t swing back’, Attorney-General Selena Uibo has declared

Attorney-General Selena Uibo says ‘the pendulum has shifted’ on Indigenous over-incarceration and ‘won’t swing back’. Picture: Che Chorley

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THE “pendulum has shifted” on action to address the unacceptably high rates of Aboriginal incarceration in the NT and “can’t and won’t swing back”, Attorney-General Selena Uibo has declared.

In a speech at the Darwin Turf Club on Friday, Ms Uibo took aim at “racism in all its forms — systemic, direct, indirect, covert, overt” she said had up until now prevented Indigenous Territorians from accessing the very services that could help deflect them away from the criminal justice system.

“We can’t pretend anymore that what we are doing is working and it cannot be disguised or ignored, where many argue that more Aboriginal people are committing crime, therefore that’s why there are more Aboriginal people in our prisons,” she said.

“Aboriginal people cannot be held to be responsible for the failures of the systems alone.”

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But Ms Uibo also quoted from elders engaged in consultations for the government’s Aboriginal Justice Agreement, who conceded “too many of our kids are in jail when it’s our responsibility to look after them and grow them up the right way”.

Ms Uibo said the elders had accepted responsibility for the problems in their communities, saying “no excuse, we have to show responsibility”.

“I am overcome that such responses do not lay blame on anyone, when they could do so easily,” she said.

“In fact, Aboriginal people have always displayed their resilience, their patience, their maturity, their want and need for ownership and also to be held accountable for such actions.”

Ms Uibo said the government’s policies in the Aboriginal Justice space represented “significant shifts in the paradigm”, including by empowering communities through local decision making agreements.

Equally, Ms Uibo said the government had “not shied away from the difficult topics” of mandatory sentencing and customary law, while awaiting Law Reform Committee reports on the those issues due early next year.

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“I understand that many people feel that it has taken far too long for government to address the high incarceration rates of Aboriginal people here in the NT despite the plethora of reports that circulate within the halls of universities, parliaments and government offices,” she said.

“I look forward to the day that I can tell my now six-month-old daughter, sooner rather than later, that I, with others as passionate and committed as me, that together we were the change agents that wrote the new chapter that learnt from a past that can never be repeated.”

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