Aboriginal offending: Patterns and causes

[Extract] Much has been written about Aboriginal involvement in the Australian criminal justice system in the past 50 years. Indeed, the 'academic study of Aborigines and the law is an established enterprise'. The release of the National Report (with its 27 companion volumes) of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in May 1991 has added significantly to this body of literature. More than any other work done in the field of Aboriginal criminal justice studies in recent years, the Commission's work provides a wealth of information that requires further synthesis and analysis. However, the political and legalistic framework of the RCIADIC has not resulted in any full aetiological examination, even though the brief of the Commission was broad enough to encompass the social and cultural processes implicated. Indeed, there is a deficiency in all of the Aboriginal criminal justice literature according to Parker, as it is time 'to move from discretion to explanation...[for] while we go on adding figures and carrying out microsociological studies of courtroom behaviour, of police 'verbals' of sentencing disparities....we are neglecting the macrosociological context'.