|
|
| Home | Search | Site Map | Help | |
In the last Budget the Federal Government allocated $20 million to the Northern Territory over four years to divert juveniles from the criminal justice system and to jointly fund interpreter services. The Aboriginal Interpreter Service in the Northern Territory now has 176 interpreters registered covering 104 languages. In the first year of the agreement with the Northern Territory, $400,000 is being directly provided by the Commonwealth to the Northern Territory Aboriginal legal services to purchase interpreter services. The pre-court diversion scheme is also progressing well with over 850 juveniles, including many Indigenous young people, being offered diversion from the criminal justice system.
Reforms introduced by the Government to improve the quality, accessibility and accountability of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services are continuing. National minimum service standards and new policy guidelines for test case funding have been implemented, and best practice standards for legal services are being developed on a State and Territory basis. A major focus of the reforms is to improve the services available to Indigenous women, particularly in the areas of family violence, family law and other civil matters. In a related initiative, at a cost of around $3 million, twelve Family Violence Legal Prevention Units are being established to provide advice and legal assistance to Indigenous women.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The Royal Commission found that the high number of Indigenous deaths in custody was a result of the over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system. The Royal Commission determined that the underlying cause of this over-representation was social and economic disadvantage. The Commonwealth accepted 338 of the 339 recommendations put forward by the Royal Commission, and committed $400 million to their implementation (80 per cent of this money was channelled through ATSIC). States and Territories, which have primary responsibility for criminal justice matters, also provided significant funding to implement the recommendations.
There are indications that Government initiatives are beginning to have a positive effect. Despite an increase in the prison population over the last decade, the number of Indigenous people in prison has stabilised in recent times, and has fallen over the last year. More importantly, the over-representation of Indigenous people in custody has decreased from about nineteen times that of non-Indigenous people in 1994 to less than fifteen times in 2000. Research by the Australian Institute of Criminology also indicates Indigenous people receive shorter sentences than non-Indigenous people for most offences.
Similar improvements may be seen in relation to deaths in custody. While it is a tragedy that people are dying in our gaols, the average rate of Indigenous deaths in custody has fallen since the Royal Commission. Indigenous people are now less likely to die in custody than non-Indigenous prisoners. However, after the Royal Commission, the definition of a `death in custody' was broadened to include deaths in community settings (such as police pursuits, escapes and sieges). This definitional change has masked the improvements that have been made as any simple comparison between the figures released by the Royal Commission to fatalities recorded today would artificially increase the difference.
