"I tell ya who needs educatin’”: non-Indigenous cultural self-awareness and prisoner education.

Glen says, “current education is colonial; it ain’t ours. I tell ya who needs educatin’, wadjellas”. Glen is a Noongar man who, along with several other Aboriginal adults living in Western Australia, teaches me in a PhD research project about prisoner education from their perspective. His words pose a question for wadjellas like myself who are raised, taught and work in a white neo-colonial society. We have been raised in, taught in and work in a colonial system. As non-Aboriginal people we have unearned privileges which are often invisible and unacknowledged. How then to address the outcomes of this in a way that might lead to working co-operatively alongside Aboriginal people? What kind of ‘educatin’ could teach us about our own unacknowledged privilege and the disadvantage this can lead to for others? Is the standard cross-cultural awareness training enough?This paper shares some of the teachings of Glen and other participants in this research. It expresses the view that, ultimately, the usually unacknowledged legacy of colonisation and associated issue of denied Aboriginal sovereignty lies at the heart of much of the disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal people today when considering education and the prison system. Addressing gaps in non-Indigenous cultural self-awareness by learning from Aboriginal people is an important factor in improving their experiences of education.

'A gender for change'

Women’s imprisonment campaigns gathered momentum in Victoria, Australia from the late 1970s onwards. Advocates and activists, operating from feminist and often prison abolition principles, used direct action, public education, lobbying and legal tools to create pressure for change in the women’s prison system. Campaigns focused on challenging various harmful and dangerous practices and conditions affecting women in prison, including forced sterilization and the use of prescription drugs for control; lack of access to children and family; excessive strip-searching; the punitive transfer of women to men’s high-security prisons and more (Carnaby, 1998; Cerveri et al., 2005; Cotter, 2008; George, 1993, 1995; Hampton, 1993; Hancock, 1982; Hannon, 2006). Whilst some of these practices have ceased over the past few decades, many of the issues persist, albeit in different forms, and new problems have emerged for anti-prison activists. This paper offers a reflection on some of the complexities present in anti-prison activism focused on ameliorating some of the immediate harms imprisoned women face and the necessary negotiations with the penal state.

Where the home in valley meets the damp dirty prison : a human rights perspective on therapeutic jurisprudence and the rule of forensic psychologists in correctional settings

The roles of forensic psychologists in coerced environments such as corrections include that of treatment provider (for the offender) and that of organizational consultant (for the community). This dual role raises ethical issues between offender rights and community rights; an imbalance results in the violation of human rights. A timely reminder of a slippery ethical slope that can arise is the failure of the American Psychological Association to manage this balance regarding interrogation and torture of detainees under the Bush administration. To establish a “bright-line position” regarding ethical practice, forensic psychologists need to be cognizant of international human rights law. In this endeavor, international covenants and a universal ethical code ought to guide practice, although seemingly unresolveable conflicts between the law and ethics codes may arise. A solution to this problem is to devise an ethical framework that is based on enforceable universally shared human values regarding dignity and rights. To this end, the legal theory of therapeutic jurisprudence can assist psychologists to understand the law, the legal system, and their role in applying the law therapeutically to support offender dignity, freedom, and well-being. In this way, a moral stance is taken and the forensic role of treatment provider and/or organizational consultant is not expected to trump the prescriptions and the proscriptions of the law.

(Particularly) Burdensome prison time should reduce imprisonment length — and not merely in theory

Imprisonment is the harshest sanction in our system of law. It is a sanction that isincreasingly imposed by the courts. The severity of imprisonment as a sanction stemsprincipally from the considerable restrictions it imposes on an individual’s liberty.However, the deprivation experienced by a prisoner can vary considerably, depending onthe strictness of the prison regime in which the prisoner is confined and his or her state ofhealth. Prisoners subjected to non-mainstream conditions almost invariably suffer morethan those in normal conditions. There is no settled approach regarding the extent towhich prison conditions should impact on the length of a prison term. The jurisprudencein this area is inconsistent. It is particularly unsettled when the additional burden stemsfrom subjective matters relating to an accused, such as ill health. In this article we makerecommendations regarding the manner in which prison conditions should impact on thelength of a prison term. The main recommendation is that prisoners who spend time inparticularly burdensome conditions should have their sentence reduced by a factor of0.5 days for each day spent in such conditions. In this article we also recommend thatAustralia should adopt a model similar to those which exist in some Scandinaviancountries, whereby the only deprivation stemming from imprisonment is the loss ofliberty. This would mean that few prisoners would ever be subjected to particularlyburdensome conditions. This would make many of the recommendations in this paperobsolete. However, there is no evidence that Australian prison conditions are about tofundamentally alter. Hence, the recommendations will remain pragmatically relevant inthe foreseeable future.