Glenn Dawes

The challenges of reintegrating Indigenous youth after their release from detention

One of the greatest challenges for the juvenile justice system is to successfully reintegrate young offenders back to their communities so that they do not re-offend and return to detention. This challenge is even greater for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth who are over-represented in the Queensland juvenile justice system in terms of interactions with the police, the courts and in detention settings. This paper presents the outcomes of a two-year-longitudinal study which tracked 40 young Indigenous males as they made the transition from detention in North Queensland back to their communities. Over this period the majority of youth arrived at ‘undesirable’ destinations by re-offending and returning to detention, compared to a smaller cohort who arrived at ‘desirable’ destinations and desisted from crime. The paper presents qualitative data from the research which focused on gaining the perceptions of these young males by asking them to identify the risks which prevented them from making a successful re-entry back to their communities compared to those who desisted from further offending behaviour.

The art of the body: Aboriginal and Torres strait islander youth subcultural practices

Abstract Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have traditionally encountered less academic success than non‐Aborigines. While there has been considerable research into school based factors for indigenous academic success, few studies have examined the impact of peers and leisure activities of these youths which are primarily found outside the school. This paper uses the poststructuralist concept of the body to examine how the members of one North Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander subculture derive pleasure through the production of aerosol art similar to African—American and Rastafarian street subcultures. It is argued that schools could incorporate some of the elements of subcultures in the formal curriculum as one way of preventing indigenous students from dropping out of school, thereby increasing their chances of attaining greater academic success.