Hi Foxy, I have been involved in Indigenous health over the years and have had to care for many ex-criminals and their families. In fact I have seen several who were wearing their ankle bracelet alarm that set off an alarm if they went more than 100 yards from their home.

One thing I noticed about these households was that the next generation of young adults really had no aspirations about their future at all. They just expected to grow up and have kids... no thoughts of study or jobs, just like their parents.
Unless this changes then they will continue to be over-represented in jails because they are bored and want easy money, as well as growing up in violent households.

"Aboriginal people are hugely [over-]represented in our jails, compared to all other ethnicities.....Maybe they are targeted too much?"

A fairly standard rationalisation.

Let's try that same thinking elsewhere.

Men a hugely over-represented in our gaols as compared to other genders. Maybe they are targeted too much.

DearJohn Big Mac,

I'm really sorry to see you get so upset about the attitude of aboriginal people to white society. But you have to see it in the context that the aborigines hate the whites because of what the whites have done to them over the past 240 years of British settlement. The whites have stolen their land, raped their women, murdered their men, women, and children, and tried to conduct a genocide of aboriginal people. So can you really blame them for the hatred they have for the whites. Crime and violence against white society is the deliberate and intended outward display of the hatred and resentment that the aborigines have for white folks. And white Australia's solution to the problem: The aborigine should just forget everything that has been done to them by the whites and just get on with their lives.

@Suseonline, Monday, 25 January 2016 3:05:26 PM

Correct. It needs to be said to the bureaucrats far away in Canberra.

Mr Opinion,

Ever thought of taking up a writing career?

There's money to be made in good fiction.

runner provides us with a good example of why it is damn near impossible to have a rational discussion about criminal justice matters with so many conservatives...

<<I thought Rose [whoever that is?] said that their was never any excuse for domestic violence.>>

They don't understand the difference between an explanation and an excuse. According to them, no-one is allowed explore the reasons behind offending behaviour else they be making excuses.