A framework for developing justice reinvestment plans for crime prevention and offender rehabilitation in Australia’s remote indigenous communities

Abstract

Initiatives targeting Indigenous overrepresentation in Australia’s criminal justice systems have been largely ineffectual. Justice reinvestment has been touted as a potential panacea. This article provides a framework for developing justice reinvestment plans with communities, based on a qualitative research project focusing on levels of crime and recidivism in two remote Indigenous communities. The framework is a hybrid design, informed by a crime analysis, action research, narrative data analysis and a culturally informed Indigenous research paradigm. It is argued that justice reinvestment can be successfully implemented which empowers Indigenous peoples to identify the causes of crime based on place-based solutions.