Indigenous Justice Strategy

Photo: 
Mark Henley
Summary: 
QCOSS welcomes the release last week of the state government’s Indigenous Justice Strategy and wants to congratulate the appointment of Garth Morgan and Napcia Bin Tahal as co-chairs of the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Taskforce.

QCOSS welcomes the release last week of the state government’s Indigenous Justice Strategy and wants to congratulate the appointment of Garth Morgan and Napcia Bin Tahal as co-chairs of the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Taskforce. The strategy has taken on board a lot of feedback from the sector, including recognition of the value of the justice reinvestment model in reducing incarceration.

The strategy has much to prove given the failure to arrest incarceration rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over the past decade. It was only this week that the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its latest prison population data showing the continued overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in the prison population. Despite a decline in the overall number of prisoners in Australia, the first in 10 years, the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison increased by one per cent from 2010 to 2011.