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Life on the outside was so isolating and overwhelming that Julianne Fleury felt she would be better off back behind bars. “I had been out of prison for quite a while and the parole officers kept changing for me,” she said. “I felt as though I wasn’t getting the support or the guidance that I needed in any way, shape or form.” Fearing she would slip-up and breach her parole, Julianne made the drastic decision three years ago to voluntarily head back to Canberra’s Alexander Maconochie Centre, a place most do everything to avoid. “I was really overwhelmed. The only way I could fix the problem was to walk into the Sentence Administration Board and ask them to revoke my parole," she said. “For it to get to that extreme was absolutely ridiculous. I’m the first person in history to have ever done it. And they were finding it hard to understand why.” The way things were going in her life, Julianne’s choice was about heading back inside on her own terms, rather than being locked-up on someone else’s. “I wanted to act before I got too far and had a lapse and maybe committed another crime. “Because that blows my parole period out more, and then I spend more time in custody and things get harder again. And things are already hard enough as it is.” Today Julianne said she was still struggling with the lack of support on the outside, such as the absence of a dedicated Indigenous parole officer. “We need to get people out of the system. The Aboriginal incarceration rate keeps growing. And nobody is trying to fix that,” she said. “It gets to the point sometimes where I get that frustrated, it makes me angry. And then I think to myself I can only do so much. “And what do you do? You throw your hands up and give up in the end. Or you ask them to lock you up. Or you give up and re-offend and you go back to the start to try and fix it again.” Julianne’s story is emblematic of growing concerns about the ACT's justice system and the way it deals with Indigenous offenders. ACT justice figures showed the number of Indigenous Canberrans charged for traffic offences rose 69 per cent between June 2013 and June 2017. In the same period, the number of Aboriginal offenders arrested by police has climbed by 64 per cent. The local Aboriginal Legal Service has even urged the ACT government to consider opening an Indigenous-inmate only prison in Canberra to prevent the cycle of incarceration. Julianne said small steps such as the employment of a dedicated Aboriginal parole officer would help, as would allowing her to check in for parole at the Winnunga health service in Narrabundah. “At the moment there isn’t an Indigenous parole officer in the office in Civic. There is a client support officer, but they don’t manage cases. “I expressed my feelings a number of times, saying that I’m struggling here and I need some support – someone who understands me as an Aboriginal person. “But it just fell on deaf ears and it didn’t matter what I thought or how I felt.” While support for Indigenous offenders outside of prison was lacking, there was also a lack of help behind bars, Julianne said. “If you’ve got an education above Year 8, there’s really not that much there. I completed Year 11 and I completed every course available in the AMC. Once you’ve done them there’s nothing left. “There’s nothing else to break up the monotony of the day. And that’s what makes people drug seek.” Winnunga chief executive Julie Tongs said Julianne did not shy away from the bad things she had done, and her story spoke for a huge number of others fighting similar battles. “Julianne’s story could be replicated by all of those men and women coming of out prison,” she said. “It’s not an isolated story. But her will to do the right thing and to move on from being punished for her past and to speak out is a testament to the person she has become. “It’s incredibly difficult for people to speak out about their experiences in prison. But if her story can change one life it will all be worth it.”

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