The
mass incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should be a
civil rights issue, one of the pressing issues of our generation but
our Governments – one after another – continue to fail to translate this
pressing issue as a national priority. The incarceration rate of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is an abomination – moral,
political and otherwise and bespeaks of diabolical racism unfettered.
In Western Australia, the mother of jailers, one in 13 of Aboriginal
adult males is in prison today. A disturbing statistic is that one in 6
of the State’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living have been
to jail.