What we found

While at any one time around 30 Koori women will be in Victorian prisons, many cycle through the system multiple times, often on short sentences, or on remand and then not sentenced. Koori female prisoners are generally young, and many have experienced family violence, sexual abuse and intergenerational trauma. Homelessness before and after prison is common.

Offending and imprisonment patterns for Koori women differ from those of Koori men. They also differ from those of other women, noting that Koori women's health and wellbeing depends on a strong connection to culture. Thus, connection to culture is a crucial protective factor and must lie at the heart of any intervention.
While a range of successful initiatives have been established in Victoria for Koori men and other groups, there remains a lack of effective diversion options for Koori women.

Next steps

The report makes 29 recommendations to agencies across government, including Victoria Police, Magistrates' Court, Corrections Victoria, Justice Health, Department of Justice, Department of Human Services, the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People and the Victorian Auditor-General.

The recommendations address over-representation of Koori women across the criminal justice system, as well as specific recommendations regarding the establishment of a culturally and gender appropriate model of diversion. The report also identifies principles of effective intervention to guide the further development of prevention, diversion and post-release programs.

The Commission looks forward to progressing these recommendations through the Aboriginal Justice Forum over the coming months.

About the project

The Reporting Racism project seeks to understand the type of experiences people have, and the extent and nature of material that people see, experience, hear, are sent or simply come across in their daily lives that is racist or vilifying. This might include flyers and stickers, graffiti, websites, blog material, verbal abuse or other treatment that people experience as racism or vilification because of their race or religion.

In 2012 the Commission ran an on-line survey. 227 people took part. As well as providing evidence of racism and vilification the survey helped us to identify actions and solutions that we can all take to help address racism and vilification.

In addition, we completed key informant interviews with peak and community organisations in Victoria to understand both the prevalence and severity of racist conduct within their communities.

The Commission also reviewed and collected incidents of racial and religious hate speech online and in the media, including in social media sites. The report of that research was released on 27 May 2013.

Read the report: (PDF, 1.34MB)  |  (DOC, 738KB)

Read the main findings summary: (PDF, 207KB)  |  (DOC, 95KB)

Next steps

Through the Reporting racism: what you say matters survey we have heard directly from Victorians about their experiences of racism and vilification. With the report now released, the Commission will undertake eight key actions to respond to the issues raised. These actions are to:

1. Collaborate with Victoria Police and the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service to trial a third party reporting system, using the Commission's anti-hate website as the access point. Following this initial trial, we intend to extend the program to other communities.
2. Extend the Commission's Anti-Hate campaign to include a phone app, in addition to the existing website.
3. Work with key agencies, including Public Transport Victoria and transport providers to support bystanders using Anti-Hate as a vehicle for bystander action.
4. Partner with schools, youth groups, sporting organisations, local governments, employers and other agencies to promote and implement the Anti-Hate campaign messages into existing programs and curriculum.
5. Work with government agencies (such as VicHealth) to incorporate information on promoting bystander action into existing training packages.
6. Develop an online resource to build a richer community understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal identity, culture and history in Victoria, and in so doing break down stereotypes and misinformation.
7. Work with community groups to deliver targeted community information sessions about rights, available avenues for redress, where and to whom to report, the potential benefits of reporting and the possible outcomes.
8. Use the evidence from the Commission's Healthy Workplaces project (funded by VicHealth) to develop new strategies to address discrimination in the workplace.

Project reference group

The Commission gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the project reference group.

The reference group is chaired by Commission Board Chair, John Searle, and includes:

• African Think Tank
• Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights
• Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria
• Federation of Indian Associations Victoria
• Islamic Council of Victoria
• Jewish Community Council of Victoria
• Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service
• Victorian Multicultural Commission
• Victoria Police.

The terms of reference for the group include:

• assisting the Commission with the development of research methodology including third party reporting processes
• providing feedback on the draft report and recommendations
• considering the effectiveness of third party reporting.

Resources

Read more about discrimination and racial and religious vilification under the Equal Opportunity Act and the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.

• Racism – definition, research and laws (PDF, 36KB) (DOC, 111KB)
• Third-party reporting – what is it and why is it important (PDF, 33KB) (DOC, 105KB)
• Racism. It stops with me