Right now there is a meta narrative and obsession that is going over our heads, from Manus Island and Nauru, Don Dale, to the Victorian election platform of demonising African young people, New South Wales forced adoption laws, prison expansion and privatisation in both Victoria and Queensland – whether we know it or not what we are talking about is incarceration.

For a settler nation that began as a penal colony, it is no coincidence that we have an obsession with putting people in prisons. The foundations of this nation are prisons.

Jail is something we take as part of the furniture in the settler state.

It is also no coincidence the ninth biannual Sisters Inside conference held this month, previously titled “Are Prison’s Obsolete?” named after the Professor Angela Davis book and work, was retitled “Imagining Abolition … A World Without Prisons”. It propelled beyond begging the question and instead imagined a future. The conference attracted more than 300 people from Australia and abroad.

The 300 was composed of women with prison experience, academics, government and community workers, politicians, lawyers and magistrates, and community members invested in creating a world without prisons.

At the heart of the three days of the conference were women who have experienced criminalisation and have been imprisoned, self-determination and the role of colonisation and white supremacy in the formation of the prison industrial complex. This was reflected across the content, after the opening afternoon the first day was themed, ‘“Decolonisation is not a metaphor: Abolition for First Nations Women.”

The need for such a theme is painfully obvious. Despite Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people make up roughly 3% of the nation’s total population, 28% of the total prison population is Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people, with Indigenous women representing the fastest growing of these numbers. Featured prominently during this day and throughout the remainder of the conference was the Grandmothers Against Removal. These women are Aboriginal grandmothers committed to fighting for the rights of children to remain with their families and not be stolen by the state.

Their attendance and what they discussed drew clear the relationship between removing children from their families and the cycle of intergenerational trauma and incarceration.

Discussed heavily was the experience of incarcerated children, particularly those imprisoned in Don Dale and Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre, all of whom are Aboriginal.

Since the Northern Territory Intervention the number of Aboriginal girls incarcerated went from five in 2006 to 48 in 2016. We also heard a case study from Dr. Thalia Anthony, of one Aboriginal girl who had experienced being strip searched by male guards on repeated occasions whilst in Don Dale. Despite the Royal Commission and Board of Inquiry into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory revealing gross human rights violations and recommending the closure of Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, the prison remains open with recent protests from the children inside highlighting little has changed.

The final day began with a panel of women who had been inside. When people talk about those who have been incarcerated they remove any element of humanity – they are not people, they are criminals; they are not people, they are numbers.

Any time a black person dies in custody the public often responds with “well they are criminals they deserve it”. We often apply more humanity to property than we do humans we deem unworthy. We also rarely see or give platforms for those who have been criminalised to speak to this in their own words.

There were some clear themes amongst this panel – women being incarcerated for protecting themselves, crimes of poverty and experiences of trauma. The relationship between poverty, homelessness and incarceration has been recently made clear with the closure of the Gatwick Hotel in Melbourne and it’s gentrification for the purposes of entertainment for Channel Nine’s The Block. Since the closure of the Gatwick Hotel, 32 women have been incarcerated. Most of their charges were related to homelessness and poverty, for example those sleeping rough and using drugs to stay awake to feel safe while on the streets.

What was made clear is our society is comprised of and arguably relies on self-sustaining feedback loops. Being black, poor, mentally unwell or non-conforming means different apparatuses of the state violently place you where they think you belong, invariably all these roads lead to incarceration. This is not a mistake. As Angela Davis and other abolitionists will point out this is how the system is designed to work. It is not a mistake that Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people, a colonised people in a settler colonial society are significantly overrepresented within the prison population.

Sisters Inside CEO Debbie Kilroy made clear the prison system is not broken, but operates as is intended, which presents an obvious distinction between a prison reformist agenda and that of abolition. While reforms seek to make prisons nicer, they ultimately keep the prison industrial complex in place.

Abolition pushes us to envision ways of addressing violence and creating safer communities without using forms of harm to do so. In her keynote, Angela Davis said it takes courage to imagine this different future as we inevitably feel most comfortable in what we know. To build a world without prisons is to disrupt a society built on inequity, patriarchal violence and colonisation.

Feminism that sees prison as the answer is no friend to our most marginalised women.

This means addressing the roots of poverty and trauma.

Nationally, 70-90% of Aboriginal women incarcerated have experienced family violence and most Aboriginal women in prison have experienced sexual trauma. This reflects a failure of the state to protect black women but also the limitations of the perpetrator/victim lens in understanding and addressing trauma and violence.

Many Aboriginal women incarcerated are there on charges of assault, in most cases related to family violence. This highlights what Professor Davis referred to as abolition feminism.

The call for greater incarceration and stronger laws adversely affects black women. Feminism that sees prison as the answeris no friend to our most marginalised women. Participants also raised the criminalisation of trans women, Sistergirls and sex workers within their communities and the need for abolitionists to ensure their experiences and voices are heard and elevated.

In Australia since colonisation, prisons have only ever expanded. Concerningly there has been a recent and rapid shift towards privatisation. Operating under a business model, private prisons see each person incarcerated as a means of profit, with the increase of the prison population ultimately being good for business.

Private prisons means they are less accountable to the public and removes the state’s duty of care to those inside. The increase in prison population, the ever rising number of black women incarcerated, the worsening state of the mental and physical health of children and adults on Nauru and the shift towards privatisation marks a crisis point for our country.

Now more than ever, we need new strategies to address harm and not systems founded on violence. Abolition work requires us all, from those in the academy, those in legal institutions, those in communities to chip away at the mechanisms that criminalise and incarcerate people in our communities.

The shift from begging the question to imagining a future without prisons signals a growing movement of abolitionists across the country. The rise in attendees over the course of the conference’s history demonstrates that this movement is growing.

The contingent of Aboriginal grandmothers, Shut Youth Prisons from Alice Springs and the 30 young Indigenous, African and Islander people from Victoria who fundraised to attend represents that this movement is intergenerational and it is strategic.

Through the centring of those with lived experience and solidarity between those affected by criminalisation and allies, this conference highlights this movement is growing and strong, and has moved beyond imagining a world without prisons and is ready to build it.

Nayuka Gorrie is a Kurnai/Gunai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta freelance writer.

Witt Church is a white social worker living in Naarm (Melbourne). Their work focuses on abolition and supporting communities impacted by criminalisation.



