Faced with disproportionate numbers of First Nations people in prison, the ACT Government has announced it will spend more than $20 million to reduce overincarceration and to improve health services for inmates.

But Julie Tongs, head of Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Services (WNAHCS), which runs a clinic in the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC), Canberra’s prison, thinks more must be done.

“I think they’re starting to hear, but this doesn’t go far enough, not by a long way.”

For perhaps the most progressive jurisdiction in Australia, the ACT’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prison figures are concerning – as the government recognises.

Indigenous people make up less than 2 per cent of the ACT’s population, but nearly a quarter (24.4 per cent) of AMC detainees, January’s Report on Government Services stated.

The ACT has the lowest adult imprisonment rates in Australia – but Indigenous people in the ACT are incarcerated at 19 times the rate of the general population (well above the national average of 16 times). And 91 per cent of Indigenous detainees have been imprisoned before.

• Royal Commission needed for Indigenous disadvantage (28 January)
• Vital Signs: Aboriginal disadvantage ‘a tragedy’ (9 November 2021)

“The ACT justice system is significantly more likely to arrest, prosecute, and jail First Nations people than non-Indigenous people,” Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr has committed to reduce the incarceration of Indigenous people to match non-Indigenous incarceration rates by 2030, and to reduce recidivism in the ACT by 25 per cent by 2025.

To that end, the government will spend $11.5 million over four years on initiatives in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. They include:

•           Providing culturally appropriate support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in police custody through the Interview Friends program

•           Ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can have their day in court in a timely matter by increasing the sitting days of the Galambany Circle Sentencing Court

•           Expanding the pilot program that provides culturally appropriate sites for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to report while on community corrections orders or parole to include additional sites and support bail reporting

•           Working with families to support better life outcomes through expanding the Yarrabi Bamirr program

•           Supporting ex-detainees to reconnect with Country and community through the On Country and Empowerment Yarning Circles program

•           Assisting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who find it difficult to obtain bail with the continuation of the Ngurrambai Bail Support Program

•           A one-on-one intensive case management pilot program for a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees

•           A new program to assess people at the AMC for cognitive disability

“Many traditional justice system features are not designed with the needs of First Nations people in mind – whether it’s not having any culturally appropriate support during police custody, or no alternative and culturally appropriate bail reporting options, or not being provided the opportunity to reconnect with family and community,” Mr Rattenbury said.

The programs, he stated, will rebuild Indigenous people’s trust in the justice system, and address the challenges they face when arrested, in court, while on community orders, while in detention, and when they transition back to the community.

Corrections minister Mick Gentleman said: “These investments reflect the ACT Government’s continuing commitment to improving the experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the justice system, with a focus on setting them up for success when they return to the community.”

The government will also provide Winnunga Nimmityjah with $9.4 million over four years to continue its holistic model of care at the AMC.

• ACT Government funds community services (22 July)

WNAHCS is the only Aboriginal community-controlled service that runs a seven-day-a-week clinic out of a prison. The money, Ms Tongs said, will allow the clinic to take on more clients.

“We know that we can make a difference, and we already have made a difference,” she said.

She has, for instance, recently employed a former detainee who has been out of prison for three years; he credits his recovery and ability to deal with life with a dialectical behaviour therapy program Winnunga Nimmityjah’s psychologists run in the prison. It gives detainees strategies to know their triggers and manage them.

Ms Tongs hopes to employ two more nurses; extend their doctors’ hours from three afternoons a week; do more program work with the psychologist; and bring in WNAHCS’ psychiatrist, audiologist, and optometrists.

But Ms Tongs said there are also barriers to seeing some inmates. “We have to be able to get access to the women and the men in there to [make a difference].”

She also welcomes the new program to assess inmates for cognitive disability; she has described mental health screening at the AMC as “ineffective”.

“A lot of it does go undiagnosed… What better place to start doing these things than in the prison? … Why wouldn’t we be making sure that we’ve got their health right, that we’re giving them strategies to manage their psychological triggers? Especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people around the historical trauma, colonisation, stolen generation, all of those things.”

While Ms Tongs is pleased with that funding, she is less satisfied with the other measures.

She and other Aboriginal community leaders want a royal commission into the AMC, overincarceration, and Indigenous disadvantage in the ACT – investigating the causes such as lack of housing, lack of access to specialist and mental health care services, and high rates of children in out-of-home care.

• Royal Commission needed for Indigenous disadvantage (28 January)

“The only way we’re going to make a difference here in the ACT is to address all issues, not bits,” Ms Tongs said. “The only way we’re going to do that is a commission of inquiry or a royal commission, because there’s too much wrong in the community.”

But so far, the ACT Government has not agreed. Last year, in fact, they vetoed a Canberra Liberal motion for an inquiry into racism in the AMC, put forward by the Indigenous community.

• Government rejects Liberals’ call for racism investigation at AMC (11 February 2021)
• Indigenous advocates furious government rejected proposed AMC inquiry (11 February 2021)

“I don’t know what the government is afraid of by having a royal commission,” Ms Tongs said. “Don’t we want to get to the root cause: and the root cause is poverty, to start with? And then over-representation is the racial profiling and targeting by police.”

The government did, however, commission an oversight committee to investigate staffing-related matters at the prison, including assaults on staff by inmates. Its report, published in March, identified inadequate staffing resources, poor staff culture and sense of value, and an unsafe environment.

• Investigation into Alexander Maconochie Centre releases report (8 April)
• Christine Nixon to chair corrections oversight committee for $2k per day (25 February 2021)

The AMC itself is a “bloodbath”, Ms Tongs told Canberra Daily last year, and she stands by that view.

An Indigenous woman was strip-searched last year, violating human rights laws, the ACT Inspector of Correctional Services found. There is, Ms Tongs says, a culture of systemic racism: in recent years, allegedly, Aboriginal inmates have been bashed and assaulted, at least one man has died of a drug overdose, and staff have played ‘Hangman’ with the names of Aboriginal prisoners.

• Report into strip search at AMC: Human rights must be considered (17 September 2021)

Detainees are in danger from prison officers’ alleged drug parties, as CityNews reported.

“How do they go to work with vulnerable people in that place who have similar issues, and yet they’re locked up?” Ms Tongs wondered. “They have a duty of care to them.”

Prison staff, she says, put Indigenous detainees down.

“They say: ‘You’re never going to be any good, I don’t know why you bother going to programs because you’ll be back in.’ Why would you talk to another human being like that? Everybody’s got potential, but it’s about finding that potential and giving them opportunity.”

When Aboriginal people go to court, and receive a prison sentence of seven years and nine months, the Department of Public Prosecutions appeals because the sentence is not long enough, Ms Tongs claims.

“The right hand’s not talking to the left hand. There is no consistency, and the harassment’s got to stop. Between poverty and racism, we’re never ever going to change anything with the over-representation until we all get serious about addressing all the needs, and not just bits.

“It’s not getting any better here in Canberra – if anything, it’s getting worse.”