Crime and colonisation in Australia’s Torres Strait Islands

Abstract

The overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system has been thoroughly documented over a number of decades. However, studies tend to adopt homogenising discourses that fail to acknowledge or deeply examine the diversity of Indigenous Australian experiences of crime, including across geographic and cultural contexts. This has prompted calls for a more thorough investigation of how experiences of crime differ across Australia’s Indigenous communities, including between remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This paper forms part of a larger study, examining crime and justice in the Torres Strait Region, situated off the far northern tip of the State of Queensland. Here, we examine and compare reported crime trends in the Torres Straits with those in Queensland’s remote Aboriginal communities and Queensland State on the whole. We then draw upon existing anthropological, historical and other literature to explore possible explanations for differences in these crime rates. We find that crime rates are generally lower in the Torres Strait Region and that the different historical experiences of colonisation and policing may provide a partial explanation for this, particularly through the lens of social disorganisation theory.

Charting the place of islands in criminology: On isolation, integration and insularity

“…Some of this previous work has been critical and focused on the post-colonial experience (see Pratt and Melei, 2018). However, while aspects of islandness have been captured in recent work (see Scott and Morton, 2018; Staines and Scott, 2019), these studies also reinforce the idea of the island-idyll. Pratt and Melei (2018) for example, see Tuvalu as a place where customary punishments had until recently kept prison populations low, countering the dramatic growth of imprisonment in the global North.…”

‘Without uniform I am a community member, uncle, brother, granddad’: Community policing in Australia’s Torres Strait Region

“…Scott et al (2021) argued that this history of relatively strong self-governance in the TSR, including relatively fewer destructive colonial incursions, has meant that social ties across the region are more stable, resulting in strong social bonding capital that tends to be crime protective. Staines and Scott (2020) showed that reported offences against the person and property in the TSR were lower on average between 2001 and 2018 than for remote Aboriginal communities on the Australian mainland, and that property crime was lower there than the Queensland State average. Furthermore, Scott et al (2021) argued that some justice practices in the region, such as the use of cultural mediation as a pre-court diversionary option, and the strong roles of local community justice groups comprised of community members and Elders, are also an outcome of this strong social capital, as well as serving to reinforce it.…”

Strong communities and justice practices in the Torres Strait Region

“…Other offence types were less prone to spatial differentiation. These findings have been reinforced by the continuation of remarkably different crime statistics for Indigenous communities across urban, regional and remote areas, where crime – and particularly crime against the person – is experienced in remote areas at disproportionately high rates when compared with the rest of Australia (Staines and Scott, 2020).…”

“…While Staines and Scott (2020) showed that reported crime is relatively low in the TSR and suggested relatively strong social capital (due in part, at least, to varying experiences of colonisation) may play a role, there is little empirical evidence available in the public domain that enables these possible links to be further explored. Thus, the remainder of this article considers possible explanations for lower crime rates in the TSR by drawing on empirical data collected during qualitative fieldwork in the region between 2018 and 2019.…”

“…This article seeks to rectify this by examining the Torres Strait Region's (TSR's) unique crime and justice experiences. The article builds on Scott and Morton (2018) and Staines and Scott (2020), whose studies established that the average rate of reported offences against property in the TSR was lower overall between 2001 and 2018 than in Queensland's remote Aboriginal communities and Queensland State. The average rate of reported offences against the person in the TSR was also lower overall than in Queensland's discrete remote Aboriginal communities, though slightly higher than for Queensland State.…”