HOW THE BIG HOUSE IS RITE OF PASSAGE
13.02.1999
By: KOCH A Source: QNP
Proud of being in jail: how the
Big House is a rite of passage
Tony Koch
IMAGINE for a moment your life was so desperately hopeless that a more pleasant alternative was to go to jail. That is an improbable fact of life for many Aboriginal youths who live on remote communities such as Doomadgee, Mornington Island, Aurukun and Kowanyama.
Frank Peach, who chaired a committee which reviewed corrective services in Queensland, released his report on Tuesday.
Mr Peach wrote: ``The current disproportionate representation of indigenous offenders in custody is a reflection of the wider problems of poverty and unemployment, combined with a breakdown in traditional family and community relations.
``The excessively high number of indigenous prisoners _ a large proportion of whom are re-offenders _ was referred to many times during consultation.'' (The proportion was 23 percent statewide, 51.5 percent at Lotus Glen on the Atherton Tableland and 54 percent at Townsville.)
``The complexity of the situation was illustrated by indigenous stakeholders and staff who stated that north Queensland's correctional centres have become part of the `rite of passage' to manhood for young indigenous offenders. Staff at Lotus Glen reported difficulty in discharging some prisoners who said they did not want to leave.''
What Mr Peach has articulated is a sentiment that is common on the communities. A boy becomes a man when he goes ``down the line'' or ``to the Big House''.
Prison for them is quite a pleasant experience. They are fed three times a day, are usually among friends and family, are taught new skills, get to work on a prison farm, watch TV at night, sleep in a warm, clean bed where they are not disturbed by other drunken or desperate people.
Outside, ``home'' is usually a broken-down house shared with 25 other people. No facilities such as water or sewerage. The young man has no job to go to, and his life is ruled by alcoholism from the very early teens. He sees his parents drunk and fighting, and his father forever without meaningful work or the dignity that honest labour brings.
Just before Christmas I accompanied South Africans Hlumelo and Samora Biko on a visit to Doomadgee. They are the sons of freedom fighter Steve Biko, who was murdered by police while in custody.
They were shocked with what they saw, and commented that the poorest street dweller on Soweto had a better life than an indigenous person at ``Doom City''.
Samora asked if what Doomadgee people had told him was exaggeration _ that young men from that community preferred life in prison to what they had at home.
``You cannot really say that, as bad as community life is for indigenous people, prisons are better,'' he said. In South Africa there was television available _ one per prison. But the main difference was that the prisoners were not kept entertained on work programmes that were merely filling in the time; instead, they were engaged in hard, physical labour all day.
``At the end of the day a prisoner back home is just looking for a shower, a meal and getting to bed. And the next day he is up again on the pick and shovel. It is not pleasant, and it is not meant to be,'' Biko said. He was not advocating in the slightest that prisons should be inhumane places where inmates are treated like animals.
But he was saying there is something wrong with a system where prison life is more comfortable and more attractive than life without crime on the outside.
Nobody could sensibly argue that prisons return to the days where inmates were bashed and treated like dogs. But there is something wrong when they represent a desirable place to go _ or, as Mr Peach wrote, so comfortable that authorities have trouble convincing prisoners they should be discharged.
Mr Peach highlighted the ultimate in bureaucratic ineptitude in his report when writing about the complexities of releasing prisoners from a watchhouse: ``Another issue causing delays and unnecessary costs is the requirement for people who have been detained in a watchhouse to be transported to a correctional centre in order to be granted seven days' remission or early release on their sentence.
``The practice has proved to be particularly cumbersome in some instances, for example when a female prisoner held in the Cairns watchhouse had to be transported to the Townsville Correctional Centre to be processed and released. In circumstances such as immediate turnaround it would be sensible for prisoners to be released directly from watchhouses.''
The Doomadgee trip with the Biko brothers highlighted a problem about which much was written last year _ the dreadful effects that drunkenness and violence are having on remote communities, with women and children the principal victims.
In response, the State Government has appointed a task force to investigate the issue and make recommendations on what could be done to address the very serious problem.
Heading the task force is Ms Boni Robertson whose team has already set a schedule to visit communities and listen to problems first-hand.
Ms Robertson is seeking submissions from anybody who feels they have something to contribute, and invites contact at the Indigenous Advisory Council Secretariat, GPO Box 806, Brisbane, or by facsimile to (07) 3404 3039. Closing date for submissions is February 26.
The problems with the over-representation of indigenous people in Queensland's prisons, the appalling conditions in which they live, the high suicide rates among their youth, and the violence on the communities being investigated by Ms Robertson's committee all have a common genesis _ alcohol abuse.
All the agencies which are involved, but in particular the leaders of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, must address that problem and come up with solutions, otherwise all the fine words written by Mr Peach or the hard work of inquiries such as that headed by Ms Robertson, will be just another wasted effort.
