Historical reasoning about Indigenous imprisonment : a community of fate?

The high rate of Indigenous incarceration is a problem for public policy and therefore for historical and social analysis. This paper compares and contrasts two recent attempts at such analysis: Thalia Anthony’s Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment (2013) and Don Weatherburn’s Arresting Incarceration: Pathways Out of Indigenous Imprisonment (2014). My question is: what difference do these books’ contrasting narrative models of Australian history make to our thinking about contemporary Indigenous incarceration? My reading reveals several differences and similarities in their perspectives: how they position themselves in relation to the values that shape Australian debate about punishment; their historical understanding of the institutions of ‘protection’ and of the impact of ‘assimilation’; whether the law and order apparatus is systemically biased against Indigenous Australians; whether Indigenous Australians should be understood as a ‘community of fate’.