Australia

Abstract

The policing of Australia's Indigenous people has a long and troubled history. Australia's police force began as a predominantly military organization to manage the convict population and overcome Indigenous resistance to the expansion of white settlement (Mazzerole et al. 2003; Cunneen 2001). In the later part of the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth century, the police were involved in administering government policies of protection, which included maintaining order on Indigenous reserves or camps, removing children from perceived unsafe environments, and regulating Indigenous movements in rural towns (Cunneen 2001). This resulted in a lasting legacy for police-Indigenous relations reflected in the perpetual over representation of Indigenous people within the criminal justice system. However, over the past two decades, community policing initiatives have been developed by Indigenous people to enable their communities to be more effective in preventing crime and provide effective models of sanctioning and rehabilitating offenders (Cunneen 2007). In this chapter, three of these initiatives are described, namely, Aboriginal courts, Aboriginal Community Liaison Officers (ACLOs), and community night patrols. These initiatives seek to heal and improve police-Indigenous community relationships and reduce the number of Indigenous people who come into contact with the criminal justice system.