Throughcare for Indigenous peoples leaving prison: Practices in two settler colonial states
| Author | John Rynne,Harry Blagg,Hilde Tubex |
| DOI | 10.1177/20662203211044956 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
Original Article
European Journal of Probation
2021, Vol. 13(3) 282–300
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/20662203211044956
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Throughcare for Indigenous
peoples leaving prison:
Practices in two settler colonial
states
Hilde Tubex
Law School, University of Western Australia, Australia
John Rynne
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Australia
Harry Blagg
Law School, University of Western Australia, Australia
Abstract
The concept of throughcare as a means to prevent recidivism continues to attract
considerable attention in Australia over the last couple of years. This is particularly the
case for Indigenous peoples, as the transition to life after imprisonment proves to be
particularly challenging for them, resulting in high rates of recidivism and ongoing
overrepresentation in Australian prisons. In this contribution, we report on research we
conducted in two Australian jurisdictions. After identifying the problems in developing
effective throughcare strategies for Indigenous peoples leaving prison, we turn to Canada
for examples of good practice. Canada was chosen for comparison as it is also a settler
colonial state, experiencing similar problems of overrepresentation of their Indigenous
population in the prison. After a critical analysis of these practices, we conclude that the
reasons for a problematic re-integration of Indigenous peoples are related to a tendency
to impose solutions and strategies developed in the white mainstream onto Indigenous
communities without acknowledging traditional cultures and structures.
Keywords
Australia, Canada, colonisation, Indigenous, prison, throughcare
Corresponding author:
Hilde Tubex, Law School, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Western
Australia, Australia.
Email: Hilde.tubex@uwa.edu.au
Introduction: A shared history of colonisation and
Indigenous dispossession
Australia and Canada, along with other British origin settler colonies such as the USA and
Aotearoa/New Zealand (often referred to as the CANZUS societies), share a history of
Indigenous dispossession and disproportionately high levels of Indigenous overrepre-
sentation in their criminal legal system.
1
However, settler colonisation was not ac-
complished in a uniform fashion across these places. There were differences between
Australia and the other CANZUS societies, in that Australia was deemed to be Terra
Nullius (literally, ‘no man’sland’), and therefore, there was no acknowledgement of prior
occupation by Indigenous peoples. Whereas white settlers of Aotearoa/New Zealand
acknowledged Maori treaty rights, under the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), Australia’s
Indigenous population had to wait until 1992 under the ‘Mabo’High Court ruling which
acknowledged Native Title to land (Mabo and others v. Queensland, 1992).
Settler colonisation differs from other forms of colonisation, in that settler colonists
come to stay and consciously re-construct the colony into their new ‘home’. Patrick Wolfe
(2006) states that settler colonisation involves an ongoing process of sovereign extin-
guishment, that does not cease over time, it is a structure not an event. Settlers want the
land itself and privileged access to its resources. As Bird (1996) suggests, all Indigenous
peoples
2
needed to do to become a ‘problem’for settlers was to stay at home. Institutions
such as prisons were employed on a pervasive scale to warehouse the dispossessed, as
their land and its resources were systematically plundered (Blagg and Anthony, 2019).
There have been similar patterns of intervention by settler states across the globe, in-
cluding the mass removal of children as a means of destroying Indigenous cultures and
enforcing mainstream norms and values. ‘Residential’schools in Canada and ‘missions’
in Australia played similar roles in terms of severing connections between children and
families, and the intergenerational trauma left in their wake continues to haunt Indigenous
societies and fuel the cycle of repeated contact with the prison system, as well as problems
associated with mental health, alcohol use and family violence (Blagg and Anthony, 2019;
Chartrand, 2019;Cunneen and Tauri, 2018;McGuire and Murdoch, 2021;Martel and
Brassard, 2008;Monchalin, 2016;Turnbull, 2014). The criminalisation of Indigenous
peoples was a central pillar of the settler colonial project. Only through this way could the
wholesale dispossession of sovereign peoples be justified within the framework of settler
law. As Stark (2016) argues in relation to Canada and the USA, imposing settler colonial
law was ‘facilitated by casting Indigenous men and women as savage peoples in need of
civilization and constructing Indigenous lands as lawless spaces absent legal order ’.
Criminalisation necessitated the ‘forceful violent constructions of Indigenous men as
savages, criminals, and lawless figures’and Indigenous women as ‘deviant, immoral
beings’in need of domestication.
These stereotypes and myths of Indigenous men and women persist and continue to
inform policy and practice: they circulate not only in the wider settler population but also
in the cultures and worldviews of the police, prison officers, social workers and medical
professionals. Meanwhile, we do acknowledge that there have been reforms to justice
systems, following pressure from Indigenous organisations, human rights advocates and
Tubex et al. 283
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