Arriving full circle

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Under a new justice system sympathetic to their culture, Indigenous people are taking a gentler approach to those in trouble. Known as Circle Sentencing, it has turned lives around dramatically. Beverley Hadgraft talks to five people whose lives it has touched.

Imagine this: a young man has been arrested by the police for theft. He is a persistent offender and looks set to go to jail. However, instead of being brought to court, he has to appear before his victims, his aunties, uncles and grandparents, and face the misery he has inflicted on them.

The young man is offered help in getting off drugs, finding employment, and dealing with the demons in his past that have caused him to ruin his life. He is part of their family, the aunties and uncles remind him. They love him and want to be proud of him again. Moved, the young man promises to mend his ways. He never gets into trouble again.

Called Circle Sentencing, such courts are springing up all over Australia and the first, in Nowra, NSW, has been commended for its effectiveness. The process has been described as ‘facing a room full of mirrors – there is nowhere to hide’. Here, four participants describe their extraordinary experiences.

Gail Wallace, 55, Circle Sentencing project officer

At 15, Gail Wallace left school and went into domestic work. It’s what her Indigenous parents expected of her. “They thought school was a waste of time,” she says. “It didn’t occur to them we could take up professions such as doctors or teachers. They’d been rejected by society and presumed we kids would be as well.”

Today, with a law degree and an award-winning rehabilitation program for Aboriginals to her credit, Gail has proved her parents wrong. But she’s still grateful. It was her traditional upbringing, she says, that enabled her to achieve these things.

Raised at the Jerrinja Mission in NSW, one of nine children, Gail understood from an early age what it means to be part of a good Indigenous community. “Every adult (or elder) was our auntie or uncle,” she says. “It wasn’t just our parents who parented us. My childhood was nurturing. Looking back, it was idyllic.”

Still only 15, Gail married and had to leave the Mission. She soon found herself raising a family. However, when the government began encouraging Indigenous people to improve their lives, she returned to study. As a result, she began work at the Department of Social Security and immediately made an impact.

“There were many policies that didn’t reflect my people’s way of life,” she recalls. “There was some disquiet at the way Indigenous children were passed around among families. I explained our kinship system: if we were left with one of our aunties, it still felt like home.” There were also problems with the requirement of three forms of identification. Few Indigenous people could (or wanted to) manage that. Again, at Gail’s instigation, policies were changed.

“I was really pleased,” Gail recalls. “But I had such love and respect for my people I wanted to do more. For that, I had to go to university.”

Gail was the oldest in her course – and the only Indigenous student. She spent 60 hours a week studying to get her degree, then worked for the Department of Public Prosecutions in Sydney, advising on how to deal with Indigenous witnesses in court.

“As a result of the Stolen Generation, many Aboriginals were raised with what we call the ‘hush-hush’ factor,” Gail explains. “When faced with figures of authority, parents would warn their children to ‘hush, hush’ and not say anything. So Aboriginals are often reluctant to reveal anything about their background, even if speaking up could help them.”

While Gail was doing what she could to improve the lot of Indigenous people in the legal system, she was still concerned about the number who were ending up in jail. Then she heard about Circle Sentencing, an alternate court where, instead of going before a magistrate only, the offender appeared before the magistrate and a team of elders from their community. With their knowledge of his background, the elders would be better placed to understand why the perpetrator had embarked on a cycle of offending and what could be done to break it.

Gail says the majority of Indigenous crime is the result of drink or drugs, or both. “White people drink to socialise; Aborigines drink to drown their sorrows. I believed if we could find out what an offender’s particular sorrow was, we could stop them drinking and offending.

“Aboriginal people have always had the knowledge, wisdom and expertise to deal with Aboriginal offenders,” she continues, “but since colonisation that authority has been lost. Now we have the opportunity to get it back.”

Gail was appointed project officer and began by selecting the elders who would sit in it. She chose men and women from the six different Aboriginal communities in the area – Jerrinja, Nowra, South Nowra, Dharawal, Wreck Bay and Bomaderry. She also tried to choose elders who had their own experiences and ‘sorrows’. Some had dealt with the demon alcohol and given it up. They would be able to challenge offenders with drug and alcohol problems in a way a normal court would not.

Gail put the project into action in February 2002. As various offences came before them – stealing cars, domestic violence, traffic offences, breaking and entering, fraud – the elders had no trouble articulating their feelings. These offences were not only illegal; they were disrespectful to traditional Indigenous law.

They didn’t simply order an offender to attend an anger management course, go to a drug rehabilitation centre, learn a trade or be a better father – they were able to tell him how to do it, where to get help and, most importantly, offer him personal support to get him through it.

The overwhelming response has been positive. Nowra’s police prosecutor, Craig Veness, told Gail: “In my 20 years of policing I’ve never seen anything that affects the defendant’s pattern of behaviour so significantly.”

Nowra Magistrate Doug Dick is similarly impressed. He’s had a drop in the number of Indigenous offenders appearing before him. “It’s extremely effective,” he says. “The bond between the legal system and the Aboriginal community has never been so strong.”

It didn’t take long for news of Nowra’s success to spread. As a result, Gail and the elders have helped set up similar programs in Dubbo, Walgett, Brewarrina, Bourke, Lismore, Armidale, Kempsey and Western Sydney. It has also been adopted in the ACT and in Western Australia. Not all have worked – but in areas with solid communities, such as Dubbo, they havebeen successful.

As this article went to press, such was the effectiveness of Nowra’s program that most of the community’s repeat offenders had been dealt with and the Circle was moving on to see if they could be equally effective with first-time offenders.

Gail is delighted. “I feel as though I’ve given something back to my community,” she says. “All that nurturing I was raised with in the Mission has been reincarnated in Circle Sentencing.”

Photography: Andrew Lehmann. Hair & make-up: Angie Barton.