TOO many Aboriginal people are incarcerated and their environmental needs aren’t being met by our prisons, an expert in the field told Ballarat residents at the University of Ballarat’s Mt Helen campus yesterday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
In a special lecture staged to raise awareness of the issue, director of studies at Wilto Yerlo at the University of Adelaide Elizabeth Grant said
that prison environments for Aboriginal prisoners were “not much like home”.
“It’s a really controversial matter and it’s an issue of national significance,” she said.
Dr Grant said the incarceration of Aboriginal people was about 13 times higher than that of any other group due to a history of dispossession and overexposure to the criminal justice system.
“Aboriginal families end up in the criminal justice system and it happens generation after generation,” she said. Also, she called for prisons to be better designed to accommodate the needs of Aboriginal people.
This involved creating a normal living environment that they could come out of with increased life skills.
Dr Grant said the the University of Ballarat’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Enquiry put on the lecture as a way of promoting inquiry and discussion in the wider community.