Casey, Lenore --- "The Role of a Local Justice Initiative Program & a Community Justice Group" [1999] IndigLawB 25; (1999) 4(19) Indigenous Law Bulletin 18

The Role of a Local Justice Initiative Program &

a Community Justice Group^[i]

by Lenore Casey

My name is Lenore Casey. The Normanton Local Justice Group was started in 1997 by Yargin Aboriginal Corporation. ^[ii] I have been employed as its Coordinator since October 1998.

Yargin Aboriginal Corporation has been set up for the local indigenous women of the Normanton area to help them to deal with the effects of alcoholism and domestic violence. As well as the Justice Group, Yargin runs an afternoon Culture Club for children, women’s sewing classes where women can get together and talk about any problems, a Safe House Program and employs a Child Protection Officer. In the near future, Yargin Aboriginal Corporation is hoping to establish a Women’s and Children’s Shelter and to employ counsellors to help deal with the issues arising from family violence and the effects of alcoholism, drug use and gambling.

The Local Justice Initiatives Program enables Yargin Aboriginal Corporation to effectively and actively reach their goals of providing a better living environment for our people with the added incentive of being able to make a difference to the way indigenous people have been treated by the justice system.

What is the Local Justice Initiatives Program?

The Local Justice Initiatives Program (LJIP) provides funds to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to develop local, community based strategies for dealing with justice issues, with a particular emphasis on addressing underlying factors. The LJIP recognises that it is the members of Indigenous communities themselves who are best placed to plan and implement effective strategies to address these problems in ways appropriate to their particular needs and circumstances.

LJIP’s are established through a process of community-based planning, which enables each community to determine their own priorities in the area of justice. The most common type of Local Justice Initiative is the establishment of Community Justice Groups (CJG’s). Pilot CJG’s were established in 1993 in the remote communities of Kowanyama, Palm Island and Pormpuraaw. Since 1996, quite a few of these initiatives have been established in urban areas and rural towns. There are now more than thirty Community Justice Groups funded by the Local Justice Initiatives Program throughout Queensland.

How does it work?

There are many different ways in which the LJG can work in the community. It largely depends on which problems the group wants to deal with initially. At a community level, Justice Groups can forge positive cooperative relationships with the local justice agencies, such as the State Police. In a lot of communities, the Police and Justice Groups meet regularly to discuss issues of concern and develop strategies for addressing community problems such as youth crime, petrol sniffing and alcohol abuse in appropriate ways, and with little intervention from the Police. This relationship has meant better understanding of cultural issues on the part of the Police, and increased knowledge of the justice system on the part of the community.

Community Justice Groups have also helped develop closer links with visiting Magistrates, enabling community members to have a greater input into the court through means such as pre-sentence reports.

In a number of communities, Community Justice Groups have begun to work closely with government agencies in the area of juvenile justice and corrections. For example, a number of Justice Groups either directly supervise juveniles on community service orders, or else assist a community corrections officer in ensuring that community members comply with their orders.

In working more closely with agencies of the justice system, Community Justice Groups have been able to develop and carry out a wide range of strategies to improve the justice outcomes for members of their communities. For example, a range of strategies aim to prevent community members from being charged with offences, or if they are charged, from being placed in custody. These include Community Justice Groups:

• encouraging Police to exercise their discretion not to charge individuals in appropriate matters, and instead divert them to the Justice Group to be dealt with in customary way (such as through shaming, growling, counselling or mediation);
• assisting to ensure an individual is granted bail, by making a bail submission, organising accommodation, undertaking to monitor the person, or developing programs where conditional bail can be served;
• working to ensure that individuals comply with their bail conditions and attend court when required, in order to avoid the individual being arrested and taken into custody;
• working to maximise the use of community-based orders as an alternative to prison (for example, by providing local programs for serving such orders, and by recommending such orders to the courts);
• seeking to ensure that individuals comply with their community-based orders and parole conditions and
• developing local initiatives to develop community outstations as viable alternative for diverting individuals (particularly juveniles) away from the justice system.

Many existing Community Justice Groups have developed strategies aimed at better rehabilitation of community members who have committed offences, such as:

• working with individual serving orders to ensure they do not breach their orders or re-offend;
• developing programs for offenders to attend outstations in order to learn traditional ways as well as employment skills such as working cattle, fencing, welding, etc, with a view to building self-esteem and cultural identity; and
• visiting prisons to support offenders and conduct cultural activities.

Many Community Justice Groups prefer to concentrate their efforts on the social issues and require no involvement in the justice system at all. Because these strategies tend to deal with fundamental social issues which are often the cause of offending behaviour, they can be highly effective in reducing crime and contact between community members and the criminal justice system. This intervention of the Justice Group at the grass-roots level is often very successful in the prevention of crimes in the community.

A common theme of all Communtiy Justice Groups is the focus on dealing with the issues facing young Indigenous people in an effort to attack the high levels of juvenile crime. Elders and concerned members of the communities have clearly recognised the dire consequences of current levels of juvenile crime for the future of Queensland’s Indigenous Community. As a result, they have sought to address underlying causes of juvenile crime such as lack of recreational opportunities (and resulting boredom), lack of unemployment opportunities, poor parental supervision, loss of culture and identity, and poor relations with police and the wider non-Indigenous community. Examples of successful strategies include the following:

• organising basketball tournaments late at night as positive alternatives to crime;
• organising touch football tours or camping trips as incentives for good behaviour’
• running regular camps or outstation programs for young people to teach them life skills, transfer cultural knowledge and increase self-esteem;
• attacking problems of low school attendance;
• conducting night patrols to monitor young people’s activities and
• counselling and mentoring young people on a day to day basis and when dealing with young people at regular Justice Group meetings.

One very successful crime prevention strategy used by many Community Justice Groups is mediation, both between individuals and between family groups. Elders and respected persons from Justice Groups are well-placed to conduct mediations because of their traditional authority, their skills and experience. Such mediations clearly reduce tensions and improve harmony in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities and almost certainly have some impact in reducing levels of offending. They enable the community to intervene in problems before they require the involvement of the police and the justice system.

Aims of a Justice Group

• Help the community deal more effectively with its problems of social control
• Address the issues of law and order in a way that the community understands to be right and in accordance with its own customs, laws, and understanding about justice.
• Consult with magistrates about punishments and sanctions considered appropriate by the local Aboriginal people.
• Recommend, and if appropriate, carry out certain kinds of community punishments for offenders.
• Take action to prevent law and order problems in the community.
• Work closely with Council to put appropriate by-laws into place.
• Hear social and justice complaints from the community.
• Provide recommendations to government departments on justice matters.
• Identify social and justice issues in the community.
• Gain recognition from the government and judiciary fro the role of the justice group.
• Provide avenues for consultation with the community about justice issues by government and the judiciary.
• Be fair, just and impartial when carrying out its roles.
• Provide advice to the Children’s Court and the Department of Families, Youth and Community Care about juvenile justice matters.
• Provide advice and assistance to the Community Development Officer in setting up programs and supervising offenders.

Lenore Casey is a Guugu Yimidhirr woman from the Aboriginal community of Hope Vale, north of Cooktown. She is marrid to Derek Casey, a Kurtijar man from Normanton, and has lived in the Normanton area for the last three years.

^[i] The text of this article is drawn from two documents. The first, by Dr Paul Chantrill is called A study of the achievements and constraints on local justice administration in a remote Aboriginal community (Australian Institute of Criminology, Sydney, 1997) examines the Local Justice Group piloted in Kowanyama. The second document, first published as the Local Justice Initiatives Booklet by the then Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (now the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and Development), Queensland. Cf Local Justice Initiatives Program: Interim assessment of Community Justice Groups (Draft Report) May 1998 (Program Development Branch, Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and Development, Queensland).

^[ii] Yargin means ‘woman’ in the language of the Gkuthaarn/Kukatj people who live between the Leichardt River and the Fitzmaurice Crossing of the Normanton area.