Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

The Inquiry was repeatedly told that Indigenous people want greater control overwhat is happening to their children and young people. For example, the Broken Hilloffice of the Western Aboriginal Legal Service informed the Inquiry of measures whichlocal Aboriginal community leaders have argued would be appropriate non-custodialoptions in western NSW. These include the use of elders’ panels to determine appropriateresponses and the use of available land resources such as Mootwingee National Park andWienteriga Station where young people could diverted from detention centres andsupervised by an Aboriginal unit. These responses are about taking ‘some control overjuvenile justice’, redressing destructive policies, empowering elders and ‘bringingchildren into closer contact with their culture’ (submission 755). In Tasmania the TACwould like to use Rocky Cape, St Helens and Badger Island, all of which have significantcultural meaning for Aboriginal children, as sites for alternative programs for Indigenousyoung people (supplementary submission 325 page 4).Detention centresIsolation is a key problem for Indigenous young people incarcerated in juvenileinstitutions. United Nations Rules provide that children should have the right to regularand frequent visits (at least twice each week) and the right to communicate by writing ortelephone (at least twice each week). A recent survey of NSW juvenile detainees foundthat 90% received less than the minimum standard in relation to visits and 76% less thanthe minimum standard in relation to telephone communications (NSW Ombudsman 1996page 70).In Western Australian the Inquiry was told,Juvenile justice legislation … is extremely harsh. For Kimberley parents it means that theirchildren end up in detention centres in Perth where they fear children learn to become criminalsand suffer isolation and separation from their families and the racism that is endemic to theseinstitutions (Broome and Derby Working Groups submission 518).Isolation is acute for young people from the country, most of whom are Aborigines. It isextremely difficult for their relatives to visit them. Recognising this, prescribed visiting hourrestrictions are waived … However, this concession, in fact, hardly addresses the issue of abilityof family members to get to Perth to visit their children in the first place. Traditionally-orientedyoung people are especially vulnerable in these institutions with their totally alien environmentsand regimes. Isolation can be crippling. These inmates are almost never visited by their familiesand they are less likely than others to know any other inmate. They may also experience languagedifficulties (Wilkie 1991 pages 156-7).Recent interviews with 33 Indigenous young people in detention centres in NSWfound that 17 had reported receiving no visits from their families (Howard 1996 page 19).The problems were made evident in evidence to the Inquiry.My own grandson’s been taken down to Wagga to the Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre. Wewas only able to visit him once [from Broken Hill] because of the distance – the miles, and