STRONG SILENT TYPES-STUFF ABOUT MEN

The news that 60% of young Indigenous men in Queensland (Australia) have had contact with the juvenile justice system (see link 1, below) was to be expected. We have become so used to incarcerating Indigenous people that we now become blase about the shocking statistics. In fact, much official government information hives off Indigenous incarceration rates into a separate category, since to record those statistics on a common chart or graph would demonstrate the enormous disparity. While the Australian Institute of Criminology (see link 2, below) offers some explanations as to why this enormous disparity exists, and has persisted over time, they quickly brush over the fact that since Europeans arrived in the late 18th century, racism has steered public policy toward Indigenous people. The problem thus is racism, our racism, our refusal to acknowledge that we have not moved an inch since Joseph Banks described Indigenous people as sub-human remnants on the evolutionary chain. The current obsession with policing, incarcerating and forcibly treating Indigenous people, particularly young Indigenous men, is only aggravating what is already a horrendous, systemic abuse of human rights…

www.theage.com.au/queensland/six-in-10-young-indigenous-males-meet-justice-system-20100323-qtlz.html

Police Diversion of Young Offenders and Indigenous Over-Representation