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The removals and the attempt to expunge Aboriginality which went with them generated a profound loss of personal identity and security, despair and alienation, manifest in heavy drinking and other damaging (to self and others) behaviours, offending and criminalisation. Recent research has demonstrated the significant association between removal of Indigenous children and adverse long term social and mental health effects. In a study based on interviews with Indigenous prisoners in NSW prisons, prisoners who had been removed from their parents were: > twice as likely as Indigenous prisoners who were not so removed to have been imprisoned on more than five previous occasions (35.8% compared to 17.1%); > nearly three times as likely to have been victims of sexual assault (30.9% compared to 11.5%); > and nearly twice as likely to have attempted suicide in the past (38.2% compared to 20.8%). 45 In short, even among a highly economically, socially and culturally disadvantaged group, significantly higher levels of adverse outcomes had been experienced by Indigenous people who had been removed from their parents as children. inTernATiOnAl imprisOnmenT rATes The significant variation in imprisonment rates seen across the Australian states and territories is even greater when we look at the international picture. The following table shows the huge variations across a selected group of countries. 46 ImPrISoNmeNt rate (per 100 000 population) united states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762 Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635 south africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 new Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 united Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 china . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 india . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Source: Compiled from the larger table provided at the Kings College London, International Centre for Prison Studies, World Prison Brief site, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/ worldbrief/wpb_stats.php uniTed sTATes prisOn pOpulATiOn image unavailable Prisoners in the exercise yard at the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre of Silverwater gaol, Sydney, 2000. Andrew Taylor, SMH. The US has an imprisonment rate nearly six times that of Australia and 12 times that of Japan. As one US journalist put it: the us has less than 5% of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. indeed, the united states leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive american approach to crime and punishment. americans are locked up for their crimes – from writing bad checks to using drugs – that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. and in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. 47 45. S. Egger and T. Butler, ‘The Long-term factors associate with removal from parents amongst Indigenous Prisoners in NSW’ (2000) 24(4) Public Health Journal 454. 46. Go to http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php for the full table including 216 countries ranked from highest (US at 762 per 100,000 population) to lowest (Liechtenstein at 20). 47. Adam Liptak, ‘American Exception Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations’, NY Times April 23 (2008). how imprisonment Rates Vary 9
On 30 June 2007, 2.3 million prisoners were held in US federal or state prisons or in local jails. 48 In 2004, nearly 7 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole – 3.2% of all US adult residents or one in every 31 adults. 49 As with the over-representation of Aborigines in Australia (discussed previously) there is a striking racial imbalance in the US prison population. Black males are imprisoned at six times and Hispanic males nearly three times the rate of white males. In the 25-29 years age group, 8.4% of black males were in State or federal prison, compared with 2.5% of Hispanic males and 1.2% of white. 50 The Sentencing Project calculated that one in nine African-American males aged 20-29 are in prison at any one point in time and one in three are either in prison or on probation or parole. Mass imprisonment? Such statistics have resulted in leading criminologists analysing the US situation as one of ‘mass imprisonment’, defined as when imprisonment ‘is markedly above the historical and comparative norm for societies of this type’ and ‘ceases to be the incarceration of individual offenders and becomes the systematic imprisonment of whole groups of the population’. 51 In this situation imprisonment: becomes part of the socialisation process. every family, every household, every individual in these neighbourhoods has direct personal knowledge of the prison – through a spouse, a child, a parent, a neighbour, a friend. imprisonment ceases to be the fate of a few criminal individuals and becomes a shaping institution for whole sectors of the population. The social and financial costs of mass imprisonment are acute: Reduced state budgets for other spending; the alienation of whole sectors of the population; the normalisation of the prison experience and the transfer of prison culture into the community; the criminogenic* consequences of custody for inmates and their families and their children; and the disenfranchisement of whole sectors of the community. *Criminogenic = crime-producing From 1925 to 1975 the US imprisonment rate was around 110 per 100,000 population, increasing suddenly with the ‘war on drugs’, ‘three strikes’ laws and mandatory minimum sentences. 52 Between 1970 and 2005 there was a 628% increase in the US prison population. 53 scAndinAviAn cOunTries The Scandinavian countries of northern Europe: Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland are a group of countries which historically have enjoyed low imprisonment rates. According to a study by John Pratt, the origins of low imprisonment rates and exceptional prison conditions can be found in cultures with a history of equality. The welfare state was particularly strong in the Scandinavian countries, institutionalising high levels of trust and solidarity through the provision of state-guaranteed security. Pratt identifies the following characteristics of low imprisoning countries: > strong state bureaucracies with significant autonomy and independence from political interference; > mass media largely controlled by public neo-corporate organisations rather than market forces … providing its already well informed public with objective rather than sensationalised crime knowledge; > traditions of social welfarism which reduced criminogenic tendencies and led to a less severe punishment mentality; > high levels of social capital; > and the power and influence of expertise. 54 Pratt sees these characteristics as coming under threat through welfare restructuring, immigration, declining levels of security and solidarity, and the ‘growth of intolerance and punitiveness against outsider groups’. 55 Nevertheless such comparisons ‘tell us that there are other choices available to us in how to respond to crime and how to manage prisons’. 56 48. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Statistics, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm accessed 18/9/2008. 49. US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bulletin October 2005 1-2. 50. J Walker (see Note 37). 51. David Garland, ‘The meaning of mass imprisonment’, (2001) 3(1) Punishment and Society 5-6. 52. Christopher Shea, ‘Life Sentence: How Prison is Reshaping the USA’ (2007) The Boston Globe 24 September. 53. D Steman, Vera Institute of Justice, New York, Reconsidering Incarceration (2007) 1; available at http://www.vera.org/publication_ pdf/379_727.pdf 54. As above at p 135. 55. John Pratt, ‘Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an Era of Penal Excess’, Part 11: Does Scandinavian Exceptionalism Have A Future?’ British Journal of Criminology (2008) 48, 275-292 at 288. 56. As above at p 290. 10 HOT TOPICS 67 > Prisoners
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Prisoners - Legal Information Access Centre - NSW Government

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