Aborigines and Crime in Australia

Abstract

Aborigines are 16 times more likely in Western Australia to be victims of homicide and 6.5 times more likely to report crimes against die person to police than are non-Aborigines. Aborigines are 9.2 times more likely to be arrested, 6.2 times more likely to be imprisoned by lower courts, 23.7 times more likely to be imprisoned as an adult, and 48 times more likely to be imprisoned as juveniles than non-Aborigines. The increased overrepresentation from arrest to imprisonment appears largely a function of the very high levels of recidivism found among Aborigines: 88 percent of male Aborigines are rearrested compared with 52 percent of non-Aborigines, and 75 percent of Aborigines return to prison at least once compared with 43 percent of non-Aboriginal males. States with a high Aboriginal 'cultural strength' and socioeconomic 'stress' index are the most punitive. 'Cultural strength,' 'stress,' and imprisonment are highly correlated and associated with those states with the most 'frontier' characteristics.