Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Organisations voices strong support for justice reinvestment

On 11 September 2020, the Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Organisations (CAPO) in NSW signed the following statement:

CAPO Statement on Justice Reinvestment in NSW

We, the Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Organisations (CAPO) in NSW express our strong support for
justice reinvestment as a crucial framework to support the community-led and systemic change
needed to address the drivers of contact with the justice system. A community-led justice
reinvestment framework will drive down the devastatingly high rates of imprisonment for Aboriginal
people in NSW.

CAPO provides a united voice on issues affecting Aboriginal people including health, education,
housing, child and family support, employment, disability support, stolen generation, legal equality
and social justice. We have collective experience of well over 200 years in addressing the needs of our
communities.

For justice reinvestment to succeed, Aboriginal people must be central in the design and
implementation and this is reflected in the leadership of the Bourke Tribal Council and Bourke
Aboriginal community who established Maranguka Justice Reinvestment with the support of Just
Reinvest NSW, the first and most advanced community-led justice reinvestment initiative in Australia.
The justice system is failing our people. Justice reinvestment is a common sense approach to build
safer and stronger communities – aiming at long-term investment in community-led change to sustain
better outcomes for Aboriginal communities, and systemic reforms to reduce Aboriginal
imprisonment in NSW.

The goals of CAPO are to improve the social, cultural and economic wellbeing of Aboriginal people in
NSW. As such, we urge the NSW Government to work with us in establishing a robust justice
reinvestment strategy, learning from the successes of Maranguka and in partnership with
stakeholders, such as Just Reinvest NSW.

We urge the NSW Government to provide resources and support for community-led justice
reinvestment initiatives and a body to support those initiatives, as recommended by the Australian
Law Reform Commission in their Pathways to Justice Report. We also call on non-government
organisations, corporations and philanthropists to support justice reinvestment.

We need a new approach in NSW that builds safer and stronger communities. We support justice
reinvestment in NSW and are committed to building safe and stronger communities, not prisons.

Signed:
First Peoples Disability Network Australia
Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation
NSW Child, Family and Community Peak Aboriginal Corporation
NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group
NSW Aboriginal Land Council
NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Services
Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Centre of NSW