Indigenous Women and Penal Politics

Abstract

Introduction Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody reported in 1991 (RCADIC, 1991), rates of incarceration of Indigenous women have grown substantially, to a greater extent than for Indigenous men. However, despite their substantial over-representation in prisons, Indigenous women too rarely feature as subjects of penal discourse or penal politics. RCADIC was of enormous significance in providing detailed analysis of the underlying factors that contributed to the over-representation of Indigenous people in custody and to deaths in custody (RCADIC, 1991). However, the official reports ‘lacked a gender-specific analysis’ (Marchetti, 2007: 8) and the experiences of Indigenous women were largely overlooked and subsumed in a generalised understanding of Indigenous experience, based on the experiences of men (Marchetti, 2008). The failure to examine the criminalisa- tion and incarceration of Indigenous women1 continues today in research, policy and criminal justice practices. References