- Posted on 9 Aug 2021
- 56-minute read
Our criminal justice system is not working.
Since 1985, the Australian imprisonment rate has more than tripled.
It is failing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is failing women and people with mental illness or disability. And it is failing Australian taxpayers, costing over $110,000 per prisoner each year.
The evidence is clear, and change is needed now.
In this session, Keenan Mundine, Debbie Kilroy, Mindy Sotiri and Verity Firth discuss decarceration, abolitionism, and what needs to happen to turn the tide of our criminal justice system.
If you are interested in hearing about future events, please contact events.socialjustice@uts.edu.au.
Sit down and talk with people with lived experience. Advocate for raising the age. Advocate for everybody being released from prison and having access to equality and freedom, to a job with a criminal record, pathways to accommodation and housing, to mental health support when coming out of prison, access to all of these things that are denied to us because we have been criminalised. Keenan Mundine
This panel is called Jailing is failing. See, I don't think it is failing. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. They want to invisiblise black people, poor people, mentally ill people, people with drug addictions. They remove us from the community so we are invisible, so then you don't have to worry about us. Debbie Kilroy
I think if we do want to bring about change in the space then we need to grow the number of people in the public who know and care about this issue. Bringing the community along is absolutely critical in terms of bringing along our political leaders. Mindy Sotiri
Speakers
Keenan Mundine is a proud First Nations man who grew up in Redfern, notoriously known as “The Block”. Keenan’s journey inspired him and his wife to create a unique, community-led solution and response to the current mass incarceration and child protection crisis of First Nations people – a journey that has taken him to the United Nations to address the Human Rights Council. He is committed to changing the narrative for First Nations people and communities.
Debbie Kilroy OAM is one of Australia’s leading advocates for protecting the human rights of women and children through decarceration – the process of moving away from using prisons and other systems of social control in response to crime and social issues. Debbie’s passion for justice is the result of her personal experience of the criminal (in)justice system and an unwavering belief that prison represents a failure of justice.
Dr Mindy Sotiri has spent more than 25 years working in criminal justice system settings as a community sector practitioner, advocate, social worker, researcher, academic and activist. Mindy is the Executive Director of the Justice Reform Initiative, a new national advocacy body working to reform the criminal justice system and end over-incarceration across Australia.
This event was jointly presented by the UTS Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion and the Justice Reform Initiative.