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如果這是中國，恐怕八國聯軍都來了

作者：kukubara  於 2013-5-27 15:45 發表於 最熱鬧的華人社交網路--貝殼村

通用分類:熱點雜談|已有4評論

 
在澳大利亞西澳州，平均24個土著人就有一個在監獄。在澳大利亞土著人多數的北領地，平均120個居民就有一個在監獄，高於世界著名的美國的平均137人有一個坐監獄。

澳大利亞2200萬人有3萬多人關在監獄中，平均每6天有一個犯人死於獄中。

難怪這是一個華人記者寫的，難怪惡評如潮，難怪半天就被撤出網站的首頁。

Policy failure as prisons fill with indigenous people

DateMay 27, 2013

Inga Ting

Writer - goodfood.com.au

View more articles from Inga Ting

Every day in Australia, 30,000 people wake up in a jail. Statistically, one of those people dies every six days.

Last week the Australian Institute of Criminology delivered its long-awaited report into deaths in custody. Its national deaths in custody program was established after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in recognition that timely, accurate data was crucial to reducing the unacceptably high number of deaths in our prison and police systems.

That this report is not months but years late is a snub to the importance of that goal. A decade ago, the program was delivering its reports within days of the close of the reporting period - the 2003, 2004 and 2005 reports were delivered within one month. Then, without explanation, each of the next three reports took between 16 months and two years to appear. The 2009-11 report has been almost 3½ years in the making.

Finally, the edition covering 2009, 2010 and half of 2011 is here. You might expect that this report - which marks 20 years since the royal commission and paints a horrific portrait of the state of indigenous criminal justice - might have grabbed some headlines. Yet newspapers of the day carried a single article - an opinion piece co-written by the institute's research analyst Mathew Lyneham, buried on page 10 of The Australian.


The government's press release - with the Orwellian title ''20 Years on - Improvements in death-in-custody rates but more to be done'' - labelled the report as "encouraging" and "welcomed … findings that death-in-custody rates have decreased significantly in the past decade" and are "some of the lowest recorded".

But that was spin. The truth is that rates of death are only low because rates of incarceration are at a record high. In fact, the actual number of indigenous deaths in prison is on the rise, with the number in 2009-10 (14 deaths) equal to the highest on record.

Given the central aim of the royal commission's 339 recommendations - to urgently reduce indigenous incarceration rates - and the report's finding that the proportion of indigenous prisoners had almost doubled in the 20 years since the commission delivered those recommendations, the findings look more like an abject failure.

Every state and territory government committed to implementing the commission's recommendations when the report was handed down in 1991. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent. So what has been achieved since?

At the time of the commission's final report, indigenous people were eight times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous people. A decade after the report was handed down they were 10 times more likely to be imprisoned.

Today, they are 15 times more likely. In Western Australia, which has the highest indigenous imprisonment rate in the country, indigenous people are close to 20 times more likely to be jailed than non-indigenous people. One in 24 is behind bars.

Over the past decade, the indigenous rate of incarceration has soared 11 times faster than the non-indigenous rate - and this at a time when the country is locking up more people per capita than at any other period. It gets worse. The gap between the indigenous and non-indigenous incarceration rate is growing. Last year, Australia's prisoner population rose 1 per cent; the national indigenous prisoner population rose 4 per cent.

Racialised punishment is nothing new in this country.

It bears remembering that punishment is not just about the act of locking someone up or imposing a penalty. It is an expression of power and a means of control. Historically, Australia has always applied different forms of punishment to Aboriginal people. (For example, Aboriginal people were subject to public execution, lashing and flogging long after these brutal measures ceased to be used on non-indigenous people.) Criminologists have traced racialised punishment in an unbroken line back to colonisation.

Deaths in custody are evidence of human rights violations occurring on our watch. That prison deaths are on the rise is evidence of a creeping trend towards mass incarceration. (In 2009, the Australian Human Rights Commission predicted the Northern Territory would have the highest incarceration rate in the world. With about one in every 120 territorians behind bars - compared with 1 in 137 in the US, the world's leading jailer - it may now hold that dubious distinction.)

In their final report the commissioners wrote: "One of the most disturbing findings of the commission has been the frequent failure of … authorities to learn from the deaths which had occurred, and to act to prevent subsequent deaths in similar circumstances."

How many more lives must quietly slip away under the watch of our police and prison guards before we sit up and pay attention?

That's 2325 since 1980. And counting.


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發表評論 評論 (4 個評論)

回復 老君岩 2013-5-27 17:26
澳洲土著問題很多，可看標題就知道作者土共文學讀太多了。
回復 看得開 2013-5-28 00:47
老君岩: 澳洲土著問題很多，可看標題就知道作者土共文學讀太多了。
請教我不明白作者的標題是什麼意思?  
回復 越湖 2013-5-28 11:00
老君岩: 澳洲土著問題很多，可看標題就知道作者土共文學讀太多了。
  
回復 kukubara 2013-5-28 15:46
老君岩: 澳洲土著問題很多，可看標題就知道作者土共文學讀太多了。
你很莫名其妙，澳洲土著問題難道不是原文標題所說是政府的政策問題？

八國聯軍是中國歷史的重要事件，如果照你所謂你我只能從共產黨的文學作品知道，你不是在變相罵非共的中國文人都在忘祖數典？

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