Indigenous Sentencing Courts

Abstract

Involving Indigenous Elders or community representatives in sentencing has been an informal aspect of the criminal justice process in Australia for some time. However, such practices have never been as far reaching nor have they had the formal recognition and support of governments as is the case with Indigenous sentencing courts in the third decade of the twenty-first century. The establishment of such courts reflects an attempt and desire to correct the harmful and discriminatory nature of the criminal court process for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia’s criminal justice system. This chapter begins by describing the evolution of the courts and the debates surrounding the drivers of over-incarceration of First Nations people in Australia. It then explains how resistance to changing conventional sentencing considerations and practices have restricted the extent to which courts have been successful in shifting colonial power in sentencing.