Volume 190 - Issue 10
The search for justice
Author: Judy Atkinson
Med J Aust 2009; 190 (10): 566. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02565.x
Published online: 18 May 2009
Published online: 18 May 2009
Crime, Aboriginality and the decolonisation of justice.
Harry Blagg. Sydney: Hawkins Press, 2008 (232 pp). ISBN 978 187606 719 9.
Widely published, Harry Blagg is one of Australia’s eminent researchers on criminal justice in Aboriginal communities. His Crime, Aboriginality and the decolonisation of justice is both confronting and thought provoking. Every page had me thinking that people who work in the health sector should read this book. There are such parallels. While Blagg does not specifically write about health, I became more and more aware of the dynamic interaction between justice and health — ill health and crime.
Blagg demonstrates a profound failure in the systems of justice in Australia for Aboriginal people, and this systemic failure is also applicable to health. There is much to learn. For example, much of the money in the justice system is spent at the rear end, within corrections, where funding is often channelled into preventive measures — prevention attended to too late.
When Blagg writes about prison as a source of pain but not shame, with terms of reference that are different from those prescribed by white society, he is illustrating a great tragedy. He says prison becomes a place for acquiring some of the bounties of white society: food, medical services, education, meeting classificatory kin, conducting family business, taking a break and drying out. He acknowledges the cost to Aboriginal families and communities. However, Blagg does not point out that prison has another, deeply disturbing outcome. It is where extreme violence is learnt, and where sexually violent behaviours can be transferred back into communities.
Blagg refutes allegations that Aboriginal customary laws condone violence against women and children, pointing to the wealth of research to the contrary. He suggests these laws contain considerable potential for renewal and healing.
The book, while easy to read if you know the subject, will confront some readers and cause them to think more deeply about the “decolonisation” of justice. Hopefully, some readers might choose to also think more deeply about the deconstruction of the medical system, so that the development of hybrid initiatives of health and wellbeing might also be possible.
At $49.95, the cost is a little more than I would have anticipated for a book of just over 200 pages. Nonetheless, it is good value for money. It has me thinking of links between law and health and the need to explore rather than ignore liminal spaces between Aboriginal notions of ceremony as forms of transition, including syncretic changes in status relationships between social domains — social domains that construct justice and health, or crime and ill health.
Not Gone but Often Forgotten: Action Needed to Address Tuberculosis in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities
Nikkita Joshua, Emma L. Smith, Eunice (Cheeky) Love, Christopher P. Lowbridge, Nicole Tukana, Amy Bowden, Megan A. Campbell, Dawn Casey, James Ward
Newborn Screening: Equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Families in the Context of Emerging Genomics
Gail Garvey, Sarah Norris, Joanne Scarfe, Louise Lyons
Forty Years in the Making: Reporting on the Co-Creation of a National Roadmap for Birthing on Country Services for the Best Start to Life
Res McCalman, Anneka J. Bowman, Roianne West, Kristie Watego, Jyai Allen, Claire Clack, Sue Kildea, Sue Kruske, Melanie Briggs, Cleone Wellington, Rebecca Coddington, Yu Gao, Isabella Garti, Sascha Kowalenko, Sarah Ireland, Catherine Austin, John D. Boffa, Marah Prior, Kelsie Kahl, Bettina Chaseling, Sarah Khaw, Emily Armstrong, Donna Hartz, Yvette Roe
Watchful Waiting Compared With Immediate Antibiotics for Urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children With Uncomplicated Acute Otitis Media (WATCH): A Non-Inferiority Randomised Controlled Trial
Jennifer S. Reath, Hasantha Gunasekera, Sanja Lujic, Amanda J. Leach, Letitia Campbell, Robyn Walsh, Tim Usherwood, Geoffrey K. Spurling, Claudette A. Tyson, Deborah A. Askew, Kelvin Kong, Chelsea J. Watego, Peter Morris, Wendy Hu, Penelope A. Abbott
Beds Still Burning: Suicide Should Not Be in the Vocabulary of Children
Rudi Louis Taylor-Bragge
Weight Loss Medication Marketing and First Nations People: Disease Awareness or Corporate Profit?
Troy Walker, Simone Sherriff, Jennifer Browne