Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Similarly, when questioned about the lack of Indigenous involvement in familygroup conferencing, the WA Government identified factors such as remoteness, thedifficulty of locating the whereabouts of families because of mobility, failure or refusal toattend and ‘a wary attitude towards a justice system that is alien to most traditional valuesand has never really worked for them’ (supplementary information page 11).There are successful Indigenous diversionary schemes, such as the Koori JusticeWorkers in Victoria and the community justice groups in a number of Queenslandcommunities. The essential feature of these schemes is that they have developed fromcommunity involvement in finding solutions to specific problems. The communities havereceived funding from government departments but the control, content and form ofintervention is determined by the community.Successful schemes have an inherent respect for developing solutions founded onthe right of self-determination.The success of these programmes makes one thing clear. Solutions to our problems require acollaborative, intelligent, co-ordinated approach which honours the principle of selfdetermination…Empowering our old people and revitalising dispute resolution through community programmeshave the potential to restore a greater degree of social control and divert our kids from custody(Dodson 1996 page 59).Developing community justice solutions within a context of self-determination isessentially a practical task. Governments are not required to relinquish theirresponsibilities but they are required to relinquish control over decision-making forIndigenous communities. Successful Indigenous community justice responses requireefficient, practical and continuing support from governments to facilitate communities inthe difficult process of finding acceptable solutions. At the same time structural issuesmust be addressed by governments. These are the underlying social and economic issueswhich cause crime and demand a co-ordinated Commonwealth, State and Territoryresponse.SentencingArticle 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that ‘no child shallbe deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention orimprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as ameasure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time’. Other internationalinstruments require that imprisonment is a sanction of last resort for juveniles: Rule 1 ofthe UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of Their Liberty and Rules 17.1(b)and 19.1 of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice.Indigenous young people generally receive harsher sentences in the Children’s Courtthan non-Aboriginal young people, particularly at the point of being sentenced to