Some rather horrid stats

I don't know where to start with this. OK, let me start with a definition:

offences against the person Crimes that involve the use or threat of physical force against another person. The main offences against the person are *homicide, *infanticide, illegal *abortion, *causing death by dangerous driving, and *causing death by careless driving (fatal offences against the person); and *torture, *rape, *wounding, causing or inflicting *grievous bodily harm, *assault, aggravated assault, *battery, *kidnapping, and offences involving *indecency (nonfatal offences against the person). See also POISON.

Or you can take the Wikipedia version of this list of offences.

Take a good look at this list. Now, if someone committed one of these crimes and they are found guilty, should we lock them up or let them go?

Remember, these crimes include rape, murder, infanticide and battery. They involve one person violently beating another person, perhaps to death, or raping them.

Got that?

Now, we have a couple of groups that are aggrieved that so many Aboriginals are in prison - here we have Creative Spirits, and here we have ActNow. Both tell a good sob story in statistics about how nasty we are to lock up so many blackfellas.

Now consider this report from South Australia from a decade ago - it makes clear that 24.3% of cases studied where Aboriginals came before the courts were for offences against the person. That is rape, murder and assault. For non-Aboriginals, the rate was about half that. White people are much more likely in this country to get locked up for drug offences (yes, I know we always hear that in the US, lots of blacks are locked up for drug offences etc, but in this country, almost none are in prison due to drugs. Nearly 1/3 of charges against whites are for drugs, but only 3% for Aboriginals).

A further 28% of the cases were for offences against good order, which includes things like break and enter, steal etc etc. For whitey, the rate was 20%.

In most cases, both black and white, the most common sentence issued was a fine. Aboriginals are not locked up willy-nilly; most leave court with a fine imposed. To cap it off, a hell of a lot more have legal representation that white people. I think the figure was 89% vs 64%. Thank Legal Aid for that.

Aboriginals also got shorter sentences - 20 weeks, vs 25 weeks for white folk.

Of the 2,895 Aboriginal cases finalised in 1998, 86.9% involved defendants who had at least one prior conviction, while over half had 10 or more priors.

10! And people wonder why after a while, magistrates go, "Fuck it, we've tried fines, we've tried bonds, we've tried suspended sentences - I'm sick of this shit. You are going away. Kindly fuck off for 20 weeks".

Not that white crims are that much better - 70% of white crims had at least one prior conviction, and one quarter had 10 or more priors.

The report is full of graphs, but one glaring one that is missing, perhaps because it is so awful, is this one.

42% of Aboriginals fronting up in court have 10 or more convictions, compared to 25% of whitefellas. An astounding 17% have 50 or more convictions. 50! Fuck me with a nulla-nulla!

If I read the bleeding hearts correctly, we shouldn't be locking up all these blackfellas, because too many of them are in prison. But if 24% of them are inside for murder, rape and bashing their womenfolk senseless with rocks and bottles and frying pans, are the bleeding hearts saying that we should let this lot out? Let's not forget that 99% of those murdered, raped and bashed are Aboriginals, not whites. Are we going to be doing dysfunctional Aboriginal communities any favours by allowing hardened criminals - murderers and rapists and bullies - back onto their streets? Do you think Aboriginal children will be better for having paedophiles out of prison and living next door - or in their homes?

Another big chunk are in prison for breaking into houses and stealing things. Again, they are stealing from fellow Aboriginals. If you have a community where some are working and building up businesses and saving and buying nice things for their homes, and some little fucks come in and trash the place and steal anything not bolted down, how do you think the honest folk are going to feel if the little shits are back on the streets straight away?

I don't want to get into a debate as to why so many Aboriginal men are violent, nasty drunks. It's simply a fact that too many of them are, and they have to be dealt with as we find them. Locking them up is not a fun option, but if they're going to persist in getting pissed and braining their woman with a frying pan, or stabbing her in the face with a broken beer bottle, or holding her face in the fire, or chopping her up with an axe, or molesting the kids, then it's our duty to lock the fuckers up and throw away the key. And if they do it again, we lock them up again.

And if the stats look bad, well, I don't give a bugger. To me, it means some outback town is a little safer tonight because a good number of the lunatics are behind bars. If anything, the shocking conditions of some communities tells me that we aren't locking enough up. Maybe the women of those communities would have a hope in hell of salvaging what they have if they weren't getting their faces stitched up on pension night.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.