Incarceration and Carceral Colonialism Notes

Settler colonialism is described by Patrick Wolfe as a "structure, not an event" focused on the "elimination of the Native."
Carceral logic is a core component of the white supremacist nation-state, producing and policing gendered, raced, and classed subjects to facilitate land acquisition.
Indigenous children exist at the intersection of being poor, young, and racialized, often funneled into what is termed the "carceral archipelago."
Historical context includes the ship The Lady Juliana reaching Warrane (Sydney Cove) in $1790$ , where $51$ prisoners were teenage girls. In C18 England, the age of consent was $10$ years old.

There are close functional links between juvenile justice and welfare systems regarding personnel, clientele, and operational practices (Cunneen, White, and Richards $2015$ ).
"Being known to police" is the primary determinant of targeted criminalisation.
Many young people are "dual clients" or "poly-users" of multiple systems including justice, child protection, housing, and health.
Crime policy is commodified, providing salaries for authorities involved in child removal and incarceration.
Forced child removal is a significant factor in the criminalisation process; wards of the state are more likely to be convicted of criminal offences later in life (McFarlane $2010$ ).

The Aborigines Protection Board ( $1883$ - $1940$ ), chaired by the Police Commissioner, controlled the lives of approximately $9,000$ Aboriginal people on reserves.
Policy focused on removing Aboriginal children to be "de-socialised as Aborigines and re-socialised as Whites."
Eugenics and scientific racism justified attempts to "breed out" Aboriginality and Blackness to achieve cultural homogeneity (Turnbull Roberts et al. $2021$ ).
In Turtle Island (North America), "residential schools" were used to withdraw children from parental influence. Reverend Whitmer ( $1882$ ) stated that while it cost the government $11,000,000$ dollars to "kill an Indian" in war, the Church could "save him" for $1,000$ dollars through these schools.
Uncle Larry Walsh, a Taungurung man, was criminalized at age two for having "no visible means of support" and was beaten by police at age nine.

Significant reports include the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody ( $1988$ - $1991$ ) and the Royal Commission into Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory ( $2016$ - $2017$ ).
The 2017 Royal Commission found that staff in detention centers verbally and physically abused children, used unlawful isolation, and denied basic needs like water and food.
Closing the Gap Target 10 aims to reduce Aboriginal adult incarceration by at least $15\%$ by $2031$ .
As of $30$ June $2023$ , the national age-standardised rate for Aboriginal prisoners was $2,265.8$ per $100,000$ adults, an increase from $2,142.9$ in $2019$ .
The Uluru Statement from the Heart notes that Aboriginal people are proportionally the most incarcerated on the planet; the rate is $1.7 \times$ that of Black people in the USA.

Historcial laws like the NSW Infant Convicts Act 1849 and the Destitute Children Act 1866 institutionalised poor and "vagrant" children.
The State Children Relief Act 1881 introduced "boarding out" (fostering) for destitute children.
The current NSW framework includes the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987 and the Young Offenders Act 1997.
The age of criminal responsibility in NSW is set such that no child under the age of $10$ can be guilty of an offence (CCPA s 5).
Critics argue that children in low-income areas are being punished for the social conditions into which they were born, using a "retributive philosophy" that obscures systemic racism and poverty.