Holistic Conceptualizations of Health by Incarcerated Aboriginal Women in New South Wales,Australia

Abstract

While there has been extensive research on the health and social and emotional well-being (SEWB) of Aboriginal women in prison, there are few qualitative studies where incarcerated Aboriginal women have been directly asked about their health, SEWB, and health care experiences. Using an Indigenous research methodology and SEWB framework, this article presents the findings of 43 interviews with incarcerated Aboriginal women in New South Wales, Australia. Drawing on the interviews, we found that Aboriginal women have holistic conceptualizations of their health and SEWB that intersect with the SEWB of family and community. Women experience clusters of health problems that intersect with intergenerational trauma, perpetuated and compounded by ongoing colonial trauma including removal of children. Women are pro-active about their health but encounter numerous challenges in accessing appropriate health care. These rarely explored perspectives can inform a reframing of health and social support needs of incarcerated Aboriginal women establishing pathways for healing.

Keywords

prisoners prison determinants of health women’s health inequality community and public health trauma mothers culture cultural competence marginalized or vulnerable populations qualitative Australia in-depth interviews

Introduction

In 2003, the seminal Speak Out Speak Strong report presented findings of the first multi-methods study with 50 Aboriginal women in prison in New South Wales (NSW), Australia (Lawrie, 2003). The study is widely recognized as a landmark piece of research due to its focus on Aboriginal women, community collaborative methods, and culturally responsive model inclusive of Aboriginal women’s business protocols requiring a female Aboriginal research team to conduct the research interviews. The study was conducted in response to a call from the NSW Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council identifying a lack of qualitative evidence on the experiences of Aboriginal women in the NSW criminal justice system. One of the most significant findings of the study was the unpacking of the vital link between trauma, the women’s strategies to manage this trauma through substance use, and the corresponding substance dependence that the justice system criminalizes as offending behavior. The report concluded with a set of recommendations that called for the establishment of an Aboriginal woman’s healing and drug and alcohol strategy and facilities specifically for Aboriginal women to address the underlying causes of offending behavior and divert Aboriginal women from prison. These calls remain unheard today.

Despite these recommendations, and the lack of responsive action by the justice system although well informed by the Speak Out Speak Strong report, there has been a rapid increase in the incarceration of Aboriginal women in Australia, with the largest number of incarcerated Aboriginal women located in NSW (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017). Women have been the fastest growing group in the Australian prison population, increasing 48% between 2002 and 2012 compared with 29% for men (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012) and by 55% between 2013 and 2018 compared with 38% for men (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2018). These figures are consistent with global prison population trends, which show a 50% increase in the number of women in prison since 2000 compared with an 18% increase for men in the same period (Walmsley, 2016, 2017). Approximately 1,000 women are in prison in NSW compared with 12,000 men (New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2017). Aboriginal women are grossly over-represented within this population accounting for more than 30% of incarcerated females in NSW but only 2.5% of the NSW women’s population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013; New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2017). Approximately 320 Aboriginal women are in custody in NSW on any one day in comparison with 690 non-Indigenous women (New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2017).

These issues are occurring in a context of ongoing colonization, racism, and systemic disadvantage including over surveillance from housing, family and community services, and police (Anthony, 2013; Baldry & Cunneen, 2014; Bartels, 2012; Blagg, 2008; MacGillivray & Baldry, 2015). Comparable patterns of over-representation, systemic disadvantage, and high incarceration rates of Indigenous women are also occurring in other colonized nations, such as Canada, and have similarly been attributed to the continuing impact of colonization, historical and intergenerational trauma (IGT), discrimination within the criminal justice system, and health and social inequity (Balfour, 2012; Harris et al., 2015; Martin, Buxton, Smith, & Hislop, 2012; Sapers, 2015).

A substantial body of research has shown that the increasing number of Aboriginal women in prison is partly explained by their high rates of return to custody (Bartels, 2012), poor ‘throughcare’ (the continuous and coordinated management of people’s needs from the point of entering custody through to release), and lack of post-release support (Abbott et al., 2018; Baldry, 2010; Heffernan, Andersen, Davidson, & Kinner, 2015a; Lloyd et al., 2015; Shepherd, Ogloff, & Thomas, 2016). Incarcerated Aboriginal women in NSW are significantly more likely to have been previously incarcerated in comparison with non-Aboriginal women, to experience re-incarceration within 12 months of release from prison, and to be in prison on remand (unsentenced) (New South Wales Government Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network, 2017). What the evidence does not speak strongly about is that targeted institutional racism by police and other government agencies systemically punishes Aboriginal women who have been traumatized through ongoing colonial trauma. The criminal justice system has failed to respond to many recommendations of the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991) and numerous others which have called for the provision of services inside and exiting to rehabilitate or foster personal growth and healing for all Aboriginal people who end up in prison (Shepherd et al., 2016).

Ongoing colonization, racism, and discrimination are associated with poor health and social and emotional well-being (SEWB), particularly chronic disease (Berger & Sarnyai, 2015; Brown, 2012; Sherwood, 2013), psychological distress (Ferdinand, Paradies, & Kelaher, 2012; Shepherd, Delgado, & Paradies, 2018), anxiety, depression, and poor overall mental health (Calma, Dudgeon, & Bray, 2017; Paradies, 2006; Priest, Paradies, Gunthorpe, Cairney, & Sayers, 2011). Reports on the health of Aboriginal women in prison in NSW show a complex picture of their health with 91% on prescribed medication and 59% self-reporting three or more long-term conditions (such as kidney disease, asthma, bronchitis, migraine, diabetes, high cholesterol, cancers, and infectious diseases) (Indig, McEntyre, Page, & Ross, 2010). Hepatitis B and C rates are also significantly higher for incarcerated Aboriginal women compared with incarcerated non-Indigenous women (Butler, Lim, & Callander, 2011; New South Wales Government Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network, 2017).

Aboriginal women in prison have higher rates of mental health and cognitive disability problems than any other group in the Australian prison population (Baldry, McCausland, Dowse, & McEntyre, 2015; Baldry, McCausland, Dowse, McEntyre, & MacGillivray, 2016; Butler, Allnutt, Kariminia, & Cain, 2007; Grace et al., 2013; Heffernan, Andersen, Dev, & Kinner, 2012; Heffernan, Andersen, & Kinner, 2009; Indig et al., 2010; Ogloff et al., 2013). Rates of IGT are particularly high and associated with other mental health disorders (Barrett, Teesson, & Mills, 2014; Dudgeon, Wright, Paradies, Garvey, & Walker, 2014; Heffernan, Andersen, Davidson, & Kinner, 2015b; McKendrick, Brooks, Hudson, Thorpe, & Bennett, 2018). Trauma is a significant issue affecting the health of incarcerated women internationally (DeHart, 2008; Douglas & Plugge, 2008; Emerson, 2018; Grella, Lovinger, & Warda, 2013; Harner & Burgess, 2011; Harner & Riley, 2013; Lynch et al., 2014; Lynch, Fritch, & Heath, 2012; McGlue, 2016). However, mental health issues experienced by Aboriginal women occur in a context of life-span, historical and ongoing IGT, and loss sustained by racism, discrimination, and socioeconomic and political inequities (Atkinson, Nelson, Brooks, Atkinson, & Ryan, 2014; Carlton & Segrave, 2014; Dudgeon et al., 2014; Heffernan et al., 2009; Jones & Day, 2011; Kariminia, Butler, & Levy, 2007; Lawrie, 2003; Parker & Milroy, 2014; Wilson et al., 2017). There is a significant lack of funding for services and programs providing healing to address this (McKendrick et al., 2018).

There is a vast literature reporting the health and SEWB of Aboriginal women who have had contact with the criminal justice system in Australia. However, there are comparatively few qualitative studies where Aboriginal women who have experienced incarceration have been directly asked about their health and SEWB (Baldry, 2009, 2013; Baldry, Ruddock, & Taylor, 2008; Goulding, 2006; Lawrie, 2003; McCausland & Baldry, 2013; Wilson et al., 2017). These studies focus on the causes of imprisonment of Aboriginal women in Australia and their needs in prison and post-release. This research shows the vital link between Aboriginal women’s SEWB and reconnecting with children, access to safe housing and culturally appropriate programs, and addressing IGT and systemic discrimination and disadvantage. Of these studies, only Lawrie (2003) specifically examines Aboriginal women’s perceptions of their health, SEWB, and health care experiences. These limitations of the literature present a significant risk to Aboriginal women and their families and communities, as the post-release period is associated with elevated risk of mortality for Aboriginal people compared with non-Aboriginal people (Forsyth, Alati, Ober, Williams, & Kinner, 2014), and particularly for Aboriginal women (Kariminia, Butler, Jones, & Law, 2012). Moreover, the cumulative impact of imprisonment produces a compounding negative effect on the health and social inequity already experienced by Aboriginal women in contact with the criminal justice system and their families and communities, which in turn increases the risk of recidivism (Baldry, 2017).

To address these limitations of the literature, we set out to explore how Aboriginal women in prison in NSW perceive their health and SEWB. This article reports on the largest qualitative study of incarcerated Aboriginal women in NSW since the Speak Out Speak Strong report and was guided by members of the Aboriginal research team from this previous study and other key stakeholders. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the health and SEWB of incarcerated Aboriginal women in the current NSW criminal justice system from the perspectives of the women themselves with the aim of enhancing understanding of the health and SEWB issues experienced by Aboriginal women in prison in Australia today to inform health service provision and improve health outcomes.

This research is timely, as the prison environment in NSW has markedly changed over the past 15years due to the increasing number of people entering the prison system, resulting in over-crowded facilities and strain on prison resources and health services (Grace et al., 2013; New South Wales Government Inspector of Custodial Services, 2015), a result of poor Western governance. Conditions of over-crowding in prisons can trigger or aggravate mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, self-harm and attempted suicide (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2012), mental health issues that disproportionately affect incarcerated Aboriginal women (Heffernan et al., 2012; Heffernan et al., 2009; Kariminia et al., 2007; Larney, Topp, Indig, O’Driscoll, & Greenberg, 2012; New South Wales Government Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network, 2017; Ogloff et al., 2013).

The research was undertaken as part of a larger multi-methods study of incarcerated Aboriginal mothers in NSW and Western Australia (WA). A total of 43 interviews with incarcerated Aboriginal mothers in NSW were conducted in six regional and urban NSW prisons in 2013. The larger project also included a quantitative survey in NSW and WA containing demographics, questions relating to SEWB, and standardized health measures validated for use with Aboriginal people in Australia. The survey findings from the larger project are reported elsewhere (Sullivan et al., 2019). Qualitative interviews were also conducted in WA, but followed a different methodological approach on the guidance of the WA project advisory group (PAG) (Wilson et al., 2017; Wilson, Jones, & Gilles, 2014). In acknowledgment of the heterogeneity of Aboriginal communities and experiences of colonization across Australia, the larger project was designed to be responsive to the advice of local Aboriginal researchers and community experts regarding the methods of data collection and analysis in each state (this is discussed in detail in the “Method” section) (Sherwood & Kendall, 2013). Privileging the voices, knowledge, and paradigms of Aboriginal people is a foundational principle guiding health research with Aboriginal communities (Rigney, 1999; Rynne & Cassematis, 2015; Sherwood & Kendall, 2013).

Theoretical Underpinnings

An Indigenous conceptual framework of SEWB and community collaborative Indigenous research methodology underpins our data analysis. SEWB is a holistic concept of health that recognizes the importance to Aboriginal people of connection to land, culture, spirituality, ancestry, family, and community. This view of health requires looking beyond the physical needs of the individual and understanding health in a context of inequity, trauma, racism, and discrimination and the influences of what assists people in accessing health services (Department of Health and Ageing, Social Health Reference Group, Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, Social Health Reference Group for National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council and National Mental Health Working Group, 2004; Dudgeon et al., 2014). The community collaborative Indigenous research methodology, described in detail in the “Method” section, is a critical research framework that focuses on identifying the historical context and impact of colonization and pathways for healing (Sherwood et al., 2015).

We also applied an intersectional approach enriched by cumulative and compounding disadvantage theory in acknowledgment of the negative cumulative and compounding effects of historical, social, and structural factors on incarcerated Aboriginal women’s health and SEWB. The intersection of health, social determinants, discrimination, and over-representation of Aboriginal women in prison is an increasingly acknowledged public health problem.

Intersectionality theory, which posits that multiple disadvantaged social identities are known to worsen health (Bowleg, 2012), is useful in understanding the complex relationship between the health and the SEWB of incarcerated Aboriginal women revealed by the research interviews. Intersectional studies of health show that groups with multiple disadvantages (e.g., racism, class, and gender discrimination) experience poorer health outcomes (Bastos, Harnois, & Paradies, 2018). This applies to Indigenous populations generally; however, in the particular case of incarcerated Indigenous populations, these factors are also contributing to their imprisonment (Baldry & Cunneen, 2014; Lloyd et al., 2015). For this reason, this study looks deeper than the intersection of multiple disadvantages to explore how multiple, intersecting health and social disadvantages accumulate and compound producing a new context of disadvantage greater than the sum of its original parts (Baldry, 2017).

The foundational tenet of cumulative and compounding disadvantage theory in health is that people who experience multiple health risk factors and social and structural disadvantages are at an increasing risk of illness and social and structural disadvantage as they age (Dannefer, 2003; Dupre, 2008; Marmot, 2005). The theory has been applied to studies investigating the cumulative and compounding impacts of homelessness (Lippert & Lee, 2015), low educational attainment (Dupre, 2008), childhood socioeconomic disadvantage (Ferraro, Schafer, & Wilkinson, 2016; Pais, 2014), and parental incarceration and social exclusion (Foster & Hagan, 2007), to name a few. These studies show that not only does childhood disadvantage negatively affect health and social outcomes in adulthood but also particular childhood risk factors such as abuse, poverty, and low levels of education generate new health and social problems, producing intergenerational health and social inequity (Ferraro et al., 2016; Lopes, Bastos, & Monteiro da Silva, 2016).

Cumulative and compounding disadvantage theory is a logical approach for this study taking into account IGT and the multiple intersecting, historical and intergenerational health and social inequities experienced by Aboriginal women with lived experience of prison including high rates of parental incarceration, juvenile detention, and systematic child removal through government programs (McKendrick et al., 2018; New South Wales Government Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network, 2017). Moreover, as the theory can also be applied in the inverse so that a positive intervention can interrupt a “vicious cycle” of cumulative and compounding disadvantage and trigger a new trajectory where the opportunity to build protective health and social factors is enhanced, this approach is relevant to our purposes in terms of improving health outcomes and services for Aboriginal women in prison and post-release.

Method

A “Community Collaborative Participatory Action Research” Indigenous research methodology underpinned the research, privileging the voices of Aboriginal women and their communities and acknowledging them as experts (Kendall, Sunderland, Barnett, Nalder, & Matthews, 2011; National Health and Medical Research Council, Commonwealth of Australia, 2018; Sherwood & Kendall, 2013; Wilson et al., 2014). This is a decolonizing research methodology, centered on Indigenous knowledge, community priorities, and pathways for Indigenous well-being (Sherwood et al., 2015). It was an iterative, pro-active research approach including three phases of statewide community consultation during the project and ongoing partnerships after the project was completed.

Phase 1 of the community consultation included 2 years of building reciprocal knowledge-sharing relationships with key stakeholders throughout NSW prior to the data collection ensuring that the research was inclusive of community values and responsive to community priorities. We built relationships with Aboriginal health services, Corrective Services NSW (particularly Aboriginal staff members), the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network (the prison health service in NSW), and Aboriginal women working in community organizations supporting Aboriginal women post-release. We established a partnership with the only Aboriginal women’s specific health service in NSW, Waminda South Coast Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation. The organizations were identified on the basis of existing relationships formed by senior members of the research team over many years of research with incarcerated women in NSW and Aboriginal women’s health and because they worked with Aboriginal women who had experienced incarceration. Phase 1 culminated in the formation of a NSW PAG of these key stakeholders to guide the researchers throughout the duration of the project.

Members of the PAG guided the research team in the study design including the development of the interview guide. Aboriginal staff members from Corrective Services NSW also facilitated access to prisons by introducing the researchers to prison governors, championing the research, and providing opportunities for the researchers to visit the prisons prior to the data collection to engage with Aboriginal women and tell them about the project. Phase 1 was integral to establishing Aboriginal community control of the research, a fundamental aspect of Aboriginal health research ethics in Australia (National Health and Medical Research Council Commonwealth of Australia, 2018) and in obtaining ethical approval to conduct research with Aboriginal people in NSW.

This study has ethical approval from the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council NSW, the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network NSW, Corrective Services NSW, the University of NSW, and the University of Technology Sydney.

Phase 2 coincided with the data collection stage of the project, supported by ongoing relationships with the PAG, Aboriginal staff members from Corrective Services NSW, and the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network NSW. Relationships with Corrective Services NSW were critical to accessing research participants and conducting the interviews. Aboriginal staff members from Corrective Services NSW, particularly the Regional Aboriginal Project Officer for NSW, made time to meet the researchers at the prisons and assisted in navigating the prison space, accessing the public address system to inform Aboriginal women that we were on site, and arranging spaces in which to conduct the interviews. They were also vital to the safety procedures for the research, making themselves available for Aboriginal women to follow up and debrief after the research interviews.

Two female researchers (one Aboriginal researcher and one non-Aboriginal researcher) conducted interviews over 12 months in 2013, during which time emerging themes from the preliminary data analysis were workshopped with the PAG. The PAG supported our review of the data and added further to the interpretation and analysis through an Indigenous lens, providing community perspective, values, and context. Ongoing partnerships with Corrective Services NSW were further established including the female Aboriginal researcher (a senior Aboriginal woman from NSW) taking up an invited position on the Corrective Services NSW Women’s Advisory Council and Aboriginal Advisory Council.

Phase 3 of the community consultation was embedded in the research translation stage of the project including presentations to Corrective Services NSW and the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network. We worked with the PAG to ensure the project findings were translated in a way that was of benefit to Aboriginal women and their families and communities. Project findings informed and supported IGT work and counseling for Aboriginal women in prison and workshops on Aboriginal history and health to improve cultural competency among forensic health service providers. The researchers who conducted the interviews in 2013 (Sherwood & Kendall, 2013) returned to one of the research sites in 2016 to discuss the project findings with a group of the study participants and develop a plain-language document containing the women’s recommendations for Corrective Services NSW. Relationships with the PAG are ongoing and have resulted in further research partnerships.

Recruitment

We employed a purposive, convenience sampling method. This recruitment strategy was the most feasible procedure given the constraints of the prison environment, which include unexpected security “lock-downs” (obstructing access to women) and the women’s daily routines involving program participation, appointments, and employment. All Aboriginal women were invited to participate in the research via a group invitation announced on the prison public address system. This maximized the voluntariness of women’s participation by allowing women to choose whether to engage with the researchers as opposed to identifying potential participants through prison records and “calling them up” individually. Women were provided written and verbal information about the research project. Women who met the inclusion criteria for the interviews by self-identifying both as Aboriginal and as a mother self-selected to participate and provided informed consent. Inclusion for the afore-mentioned quantitative health survey was open to all Aboriginal women. We were well supported by the women, and the women were very keen to be involved in the project, as they wanted to ensure there would be a positive outcome for their sisters inside.

Data Collection

Interviews were as unstructured as possible and took a yarning approach. Yarning in a research context first involves establishing accountability to Aboriginal people participating in the research prior to the data collection by building respectful relationships with participants and their communities. In the research interview, a yarning method allows participants to tell their story through a supportive and facilitative method that privileges their knowledge and allows them to speak freely about their experiences and ideas (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010; Fredericks et al., 2011; Walker, Fredericks, Mills, & Anderson, 2014).

The interviews were conducted in spaces provided by Aboriginal staff members from Corrective Services NSW, for example, Aboriginal art rooms, education and program rooms, or outdoor yarning spaces. The interview guide constructed in collaboration with the PAG contained 10 topic areas designed as prompts for during the research interview if needed. Topics included the following: experiences of mothering; access to children from prison; pathways to prison; childhood; health and health care experiences; experiences of prison; experiences of transition from prison; post-release experiences; impact of incarceration on family and community; and the women’s goals, priorities, strengths, and support systems. The interviewers focused on listening to the women’s stories rather than the interview guide. The female Aboriginal researcher facilitated the interview, whereas the non-Aboriginal female researcher co-facilitated and supported the process by referring to the interview topics if needed. Both researchers supported and encouraged the women. Interview topics were explored in-depth throughout the women’s stories with minimal use of the interview guide.

Data Analysis

We conducted a thematic data analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), taking an inductive grounded-theory approach to generate themes across the interviews (Charmaz, 2014). This was a multi-stage process, with the first stage involving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers from the project team coding a sample of the interview transcripts and discussing the data interpretation. This was a process of internal validation, as the researchers continued coding until reaching consensus that we were identifying codes and interpreting the data consistently. Codes were applied to sequences of text to minimize fragmentation of the women’s stories. A coding frame was developed during this stage to assist the researchers who would be completing the coding in Stage 2.

Stage 2 consisted of coding the remaining transcripts. This was undertaken by two of the researchers from Stage 1. NVivo 10 (QSR International) software was utilized as a data management tool. As new codes emerged that did not appear in the coding frame, these were discussed among the research team. Stage 3 involved workshopping the codes into themes and presenting them to the PAG for their interpretation and as a process of external validation. Themes were defined, contextualized, and developed further by the PAG, guiding the research team into Stage 4 of the analysis where themes were reviewed and revised incorporating the PAG advice. Our final stage of analysis involved developing a conclusive set of themes and sub-themes that mapped our data and writing the analysis. Following Braun and Clarke (2006), we considered not only the story being told within each theme but how the themes interrelated and fit into the broader story told by the data.

Results

We interviewed 43 Aboriginal mothers in metropolitan, regional, and remote prisons in NSW Australia. The analysis identified two primary themes related to the women’s health: (a) women experience clusters of health problems incorporating physical and social dimensions of health and (b) women have holistic, culturally specific perspectives on what it means to be healthy and stay healthy.

Clusters of Health Problems: The Intersection of Physical and Social Health

Women in the study were asked in interviews about the general state of their health. The health stories related by the women provide a detailed and intimate picture of how they view the interrelatedness of their health and SEWB. Their stories showed clusters and patterns of interrelated health and SEWB problems that were both physical and social. The context of health problems is embedded in women’s narratives about their and their family and community’s SEWB and included numerous IGT experiences, contact with the criminal justice system, removal of children, and poor access to safe housing. Medical trauma intersects with psychological trauma, compounding to produce long-standing chronic and intractable health and SEWB problems as well as multiple instances of acute illness or injury. IGT is the precursor of chronic diseases that are prevalent within Australian Aboriginal communities (Berger & Sarnyai, 2015; Brown, 2012; Sherwood, 2013).

Physical injury

Physical injury was a common thread in the women’s stories, both unintentional injuries from causes such as fire and intentional, inflicted injury. High incidence of traumatic brain injury has been reported internationally (Williams et al., 2010) and in Australian male prisoners (Schofield et al., 2006); however, the context of the injuries sustained by these women is different. Women talked about the impact of accidental injury on their mothering:

My oldest girl is 14 and 10 and nine, the little boys. I had an accident about 10 years ago; a car hit me off my bike when I was riding and I had a real bad concussion, head injury, and I can’t remember stuff that well. It’s shocking, sometimes I can’t remember my kids’ birth dates and stuff like that.

Most of my time see I spent in hospital because, yeah, I didn’t really have much to do with my children because I got badly burnt and I got flown to X [place name removed]. And yeah . . . I was standing at a fire and my skirt got caught and my nephew saved my life.

Women reported high levels of intentional injury as a result of family violence occasioning head pain, blurred vision, memory loss, “going blank”, disorientation, broken noses, and a fractured skull. As a consequence, some women had been on disability pensions and one woman was seeking victim’s compensation. Head injury was especially common and normalized by a number of women as part of “having a rough life” or merely as an old injury, despite apparently worsening symptoms. Women who had one type of injury often evidenced multiple co-occurring injuries:

I had a back injury from one guy, run me over with a four wheel drive, had my blood put back into me and, yeah . . . other than that I got injury from another one; broken nose and a fractured skull but I’m going to stay clear of it.

The social impacts of injury for mothers were pronounced. Women said that injury led to separation from children due to hospitalization, which could be prolonged, or they experienced the interruption of mothering due to frequent hospital admissions. Women reported that hospital absences contributed to the breakdown in relationships with children and to the likelihood of their forced removal by child protection services. One woman sought help from the Department of Community Services (DOCS), the statutory government department for child protection in NSW (currently known as Family and Community Services [FACS]), because of her head injury and her children were removed as a result. She told the research interviewers that her injury caused her to be vulnerable and unable to understand the information given to her by DOCS at the time. Once recovered, she was granted sole custody of her child; however, this outcome is unusual.

Trauma and substance use

Child removal was too common an occurrence and directly associated with trauma, substance use, and offending. Critically, women talked about self-medicating with substances in response to the trauma of having their child removed, which in turn led to their arrest and incarceration. The trauma of child removal was claimed as the most significant injury impacting health and SEWB. The women identified this as a devastating and life-changing intergenerational issue, with their own histories of being forcibly removed and members of their family being forcibly removed from their families as children as part of the ‘stolen generations.’ ‘Stolen generations’ refers to the state-sanctioned and racial discrimination of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families that has occurred in Australia since the time of colonization, but peaked in the 20th century, and continues post the Australian government national apology in 2008 (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Australia, 1997; McKendrick et al., 2018). The women’s stories clearly demonstrate that this is an ongoing systemic national issue:

That is what—that was the main thing that I was happy to see is—because I’m hoping a lot of other mothers will come forward, because this stolen generation hasn’t stopped. It shouldn’t be happening. It’s got to stop. They have to stop stealing our babies. That is my main issue of being in here, is the DOCS. They’ve got to stop looking at us as bad people and look at the things—how long we did look after our children. Look at their school records. That’s my main thing. I wish a lot more women come forward and let them know, because I’m telling you, down there every black woman I know—there was over 100 black women down there—a whole lot of them had their kids taken off them, all in DOCS or with their family through DOCS care.

Yeah, yeah, mainly from stolen generation or they’ve been taken away, you know, and that’s—it’s painful and they seem like they’re in that same cycle like me, you know, being in that same cycle again. And it’s a lot of pain, you’ve got to try and get around it, you know and make yourself strong.

I blame DoCS sometimes for my habit and things I have. Like if they didn’t take the kids I wouldn’t have used and I wouldn’t have got a habit. I just felt really depressed and there was an empty feeling inside, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I couldn’t stop crying. I ended up using and that was the thing that sort blanked my mind from it all.

A significant number of women said that they were using illicit substances as self-medication for trauma and that this too is an intergenerational issue impacting their parents, children, and communities (also see Goodman et al., 2017; Honorato, Caltabiano, & Clough, 2016; Lawrie, 2003):

That’s why people—yeah, a lot of them, Aboriginal people they do drugs how can I put it, they can’t let it out, so they can with the drugs, you know.

I’ve never been drug free or alcohol free since I was a kid . . . I got on it just to block out stuff, so I didn’t remember stuff. It’s my way of just self-medicating, blocking shit out and that.

And you know like mum was, you know, drugs and like that and I’ve been through—I’ve been through a lot, you know. I’ve been in for drugs, I’ve been in for—you know, I got raped when I was only young, stuff like that. I’ve had my kids in gaol, my daughters been in gaol, she’s been coming in and out of custody since she was a kid.

The majority of the women said they wanted to be drug free and that this was one of their health goals; however, many also acknowledged that adverse life circumstances on the outside meant that this was unlikely. They were too aware that they were not likely to get the SEWB support required to stay well. Many women had an acute awareness of the need to work on healing their own life trauma and the necessity of external support in assisting them to create a safe and stable environment in which drug taking was less likely to occur. As one woman said:

That’s what I need to really—I really do need to focus on mending, oh my God this is too much, but if I don’t do that then I’m never going to deal with that part of my life. That includes my drug taking as well.

Another highlighted the importance of housing and post-release support for dealing with her substance use:

When I get out—the one thing when I got out was I had nowhere to go. So I had to go back to the people I know and they’re drug addicts and I’ve got stay at their place. There’s no housing when I got out. No one would help me. I don’t have references to go around to the real estates and things like that. You go into Department of Housing and they’ll put you on a list but that’s seven years long, at least.

Many women in this study who had drug dependency problems were administered opiate substitution therapy (OST) in prison (also see Gisev et al., 2014). Methadone treatment itself was not unproblematic. Some women did not want to go on Methadone citing the medication as amounting to “liquid handcuffs”, whereas others were keen to get on the program with the prison doctors’ consent, but were forced by NSW health policy onto a waiting list (New South Wales Ministry of Health, 2018). The unevenness of the women’s individual responses to the Methadone program is captured below. These women found Methadone to be beneficial:

I’m on the methadone program so that’s helped me, and it took me a bit to go up on that as well—took about a month to go up.

I want to get on the methadone program; I’ve been on it in the past. I did very well. I got out of gaol, I was on it about two months and then the doctor decided to change me to Suboxone. I was on that for about three, maybe four weeks. Moved from X [place name removed] to Y [place name removed] back to X and I was straight back into the drugs again. So I really want to get back on the methadone. In here now it takes quite a while.

Other women were concerned about the side-effects and restrictions related to taking Methadone:

I’m just worried about getting mixed up in the drug scene and delaying it [having her children in her care] and that. I’m not sure I’m going to stop using when I get out. I don’t want to [go on Methadone] but I know—yeah. I hate this sluggish feeling, I like to feel like I’ve got energy. They put me on methadone in here and it’s just making me really sluggish and I don’t like that feeling.

that was the only problem with me. It wasn’t that I was going out wanting to use, it was like a time like if I was late for work and that, or parents weren’t picking their children up time and that then I’d miss my methadone. Because I was getting dosed at a chemist, and I had only till 3.30, so if they weren’t—parents were there, I had 15 minutes to get back for the next class, and if I missed it.

Meeting Methadone program requirements was identified as much more challenging in the community due to the multitude of other things the women had to manage, for example, parenting and work responsibilities. The woman’s location, accommodation, and social connections also affected their ability to stay on Methadone, revealing the intersection and disadvantageous accumulation and compounding of social, structural, and health issues over time.

Mental health and SEWB

Women in prison have much higher rates of both chronic medical and psychiatric disorders (Binswanger et al., 2010; Indig, Gear, & Wilhelm, 2016) as well as of mental and cognitive disability (Baldry et al., 2015; Baldry et al., 2016) than their male counterparts. Sadly, many of the women in this study were not well informed about their diagnosis although were able to tell us about long-standing mental health and SEWB problems, particularly anxiety and depression, which were connected to trauma, and high dosages of anti-psychotic medications:

Just mental health, I’m on Zyprexa for schizophrenia but it’s a mood stabiliser as well, and depression and anxiety. That’s just all from my upbringing and that. Mum was an alcoholic and she just used to just bash us and that when she was drunk, just belt us up and that. Sexual abuse and all that and just mucked my head up for being an adult. It didn’t affect me that much as a child, well I didn’t think it did, but it did.

I suffered bad anxiety and I’m on anxiety medication outside but obviously they don’t give it here. Yeah, very bad anxiety. It’s pretty hard in here. I’m one of seven, I’m the youngest girl and yeah, I had a lot of problems when I was growing being molested and [unclear] and got taken away from my family. Yeah, I hadn’t really, you know,[unclear] but I finally found a counsellor about four or five months ago through the mental health team.

Some women were knowledgeable and pro-active about treatment including asking for medication reviews and appointments; however, several women reported significant barriers to accessing treatment in prison including long waiting times and restrictions on the medication available to them in the community:

No, I’m on Seroquel. I’ve been taking—all my information is legit. They’re not giving my medication in here. I just recently come down from 1200 to 50 on a Seroquel, it’s an anti-psychotic pill. And I need it. I’m not having it. Last night was the hardest night for me that I’ve had. I’ve been here a month and they have not assessed—they’ve put me on 50 milligrams. Because apparently the medication that I’m on, people sell them in here, they trade them.

One of the most significant issues coming out of the interviews was the triggering or exacerbation of mental health problems due to stress and deepest worry about children. The following excerpt is illustrative:

We need support. Especially being locked up, not having access to phone calls and being able to do all that. All of us end up mental and getting put on psych pills when we shouldn’t even be on them, but yet they’re doing that to us. By taking our babies, they’re sending us mental.

These results confirm existing understandings that the mental health and SEWB of incarcerated Aboriginal women are inextricably connected to intergenerational cycles of child removal, trauma, and disadvantage. Traumas intersect and compound, creating complex health and social and emotional support needs, especially when women use self-medication with illicit substances as a means for coping with trauma and are cycling in and out of prison. However, long waiting times to be assessed and restrictions on medications in prison present a significant danger for these women, resulting in women becoming acutely unwell. The women reported that other women had taken their own lives because they did not have access to effective medication. In addition, the absence of support and use of medication as a method of responding to the women’s trauma of being separated from their children demonstrates that at a systemic level, there is a serious lack of culturally informed patient-centered approaches to address the SEWB of Aboriginal women in prison. This problematizes Aboriginal women and results in factors that “co-constitute and mutually reinforce one another” (Bastos et al., 2018, p. 210) and “pile on top of each over time, are not resolved and compound” (Baldry, 2017, p. 105).

Chronic medical conditions

The chronic medical problems that women spoke about most often in interviews were intrinsically gendered. In particular, they reported a high occurrence of reproductive health problems including severe levels of abnormal cells on the cervix (CIN2, CIN 3), endometriosis, polycystic ovarian cysts, and cervical cancer. As for mental health and SEWB, women also identified significant difficulty in accessing treatment for these conditions in prison:

I’ve had CIN3, 2001. That was after I had my child, I got diagnosed with that. I had the operation and a colonoscopy (colposcopy) and everything. Then I’ve had—probably 2008 I think it was—I found out I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, and they didn’t know why I had so much pain and then they found out I had endometriosis—around 2008 I think it was. I got told I couldn’t have any other kids and like, it was very rare—infertile or whatever it is. Then I fell pregnant and lost the baby in 2008, after about four or five weeks—eight weeks I think it was. And then before that 2002 or 2003, I had to have a termination of a baby that was 16 weeks old because his skull wasn’t formed.

Well, I was just diagnosed with having—one off having cervical cancer just before I come in. I had surgery on the 8th. I’m waiting for my results on the 24th of this month. So that’s really sucky. I only found that out because I had an abortion which I didn’t want to have. Yes, so it’s been really hard.

Other than that I’m just concerned about my health. I’m due for a full medical but with the newer injury sustained by [ex-partner] (name removed), I haven’t felt right in the head and the vision in my left eye’s deteriorating . . . And I would like to have a CAT scan and ultrasound, because I had chocolate ovarian cysts on my ovaries.

Every time I go to see them or when I speak to them, I put green forms in—I’ve put numerous green forms in—they don’t listen to me, I’m not taken seriously. I’ve gone up and I think because I’ve told them I want to stay off the drugs, they don’t want to give me anything at all, but I need pain management. I’m not so bad now but I was going through times before my periods when I was just—about three or four weeks—and I was in so much pain.

The medical literature connects violence against women with chronic disease (Aday, Dye, & Kaiser, 2014) and higher incidents of sexually transmitted diseases and cervical cancer (Coker, Hopenhayn, DeSimone, Bush, & Crofford, 2009). These women’s narratives anecdotally bore out the linkages between trauma and reproductive health problems. Patterns of trauma, loss, and abuse permeated women’s stories and were implicated in cognitive impairment, gynecological problems, injury, poor mental health and SEWB, and chronic disease. The prison environment could exacerbate these problems if there were extensive waiting times for treatment or the women were unable to access treatment and support. One of the challenges for the women in addressing their needs is that chronic health problems are not conceptualized by the women as “individualized” health problems (as in dominant medical and mainstream health and social services’ paradigms), rather they are connected to experiences of IGT and discrimination from health and social services that affect the health and SEWB of their communities and have accumulated and compounded over time.

Holistic Perspectives on Being and Staying Healthy

Women overwhelmingly stated that health was important. Their concerns were around a commitment to their own health and also the health of their families and communities. Most women held a holistic notion of health encompassing physical health and SEWB and what is required to become healthy and stay healthy:

You’ve got to have a healthy mind, a healthy body and a healthy soul, no matter what, you know.

This woman spoke about nutrition and personal agency as part of health and bemoaned the lack of access to fresh vegetables and to growing her own vegetables in prison:

It’d be good if you had better food though . . . yeah, healthier. Mainly oranges and, you know, a bit of fruit and your own veggies where we can cook up. I’m used to cooking myself, you know, I cook up—but they wouldn’t let us [grow food]. Even if you had the seeds, they wouldn’t even let us, you know, grow them so—I mean why don’t they just have it like they used to have, having the kitchen over here and having your own meat and having all the trollies and just feeding us that way like they used to.

The women’s views aligned with Indigenous cultural worldviews on health and the Australian National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation definition of health:

Aboriginal health means not just the physical well-being of an individual but refers to the social, emotional and cultural well-being of the whole Community in which each individual is able to achieve their full potential as a human being thereby bringing about the total well-being of their Community. (National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party, 1989)

Women said that health was about the absence of health problems, overcoming health problems, and getting off or maintaining desistance from harmful substances. However, health in these narratives was equally about the presence of looking after herself as directed and focused self-care, attending to healing especially of past traumas, the creation of stability of living conditions, self-improvement such as study, self-sustainment such as employment, the restoration of relationships and motherhood identity, and connecting with culture and with Aboriginal health services. The women acknowledged the connection between social determinants of health and SEWB, particularly education, training, and employment:

but yeah, I want to change my life, you know, like that lifestyle with the drugs and, you know, I’m over it. I don’t want to live that life anymore, I just want to—you know, get to know my daughter and build a bond with her and, yeah, live a normal life. And when I get out I want to go to TAFE and I’ve got [unclear] when I get out, I want to go to TAFE and getting a job, yeah.

I just done my micro business—small business certificate so when I get out at least I have a bit more knowledge to open my own dance school, because before I only worked for like high schools and youth centres.

Women conceptualized health as a process and highlighted the role of agency in a “becoming healthy process”. Becoming healthy was a sequential process with discrete steps that needed to be negotiated over time. Women recognized the need for action and repetition of action in the becoming healthy process. They understood that regularity of medical appointments and routine of receiving and taking medication regularly are important. While a number of women struggled, women recognized that a pro-active approach to health is vital:

I don’t use while I’m in gaol. It’s my clean time, because I’m really scared of catching Hep C, and I’ve been a drug user for nearly 17 years now, on and off, and I don’t have the Hep C virus.

I like to be up to date with my things like that, you know . . . To be on the safe side. Because every two years I get my Pap smear test done.

Like I said I want to eventually get off the methadone program, take it one step at a time.

I’m a bad asthmatic, so my lungs only work a quarter per cent . . . I’ve got all my puffers, my preventers, all of that stuff. I make sure I come up and get them regularly. I put my name down to see the doctor whenever I’m feeling sick or anything.

Although the women’s agency was central in these accounts demonstrated by their knowledge and pro-action in looking after their health, women frequently spoke about the need for support during the becoming healthy process. They recognized the supportive role of health workers and services that were not available. A number of women spoke about the importance of cultural connection and support on the road to health and conceptualized this as a process of healing. The women identified that Waminda South Coast Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation in Nowra, NSW, was the only women’s health service where they would get the care that they needed. Access to Aboriginal art programs in prison was particularly highlighted as an important medium for healing:

Yeah, yeah, it’s a healing process for us, we [unclear] without talking, you know, it’s an expressing thing in a white man’s world and stuff but in Aboriginal culture it’s a healing process, heal your mind and the soul.

Discussion

Women who come into prison have many comorbid health issues (Binswanger et al., 2010; Indig et al., 2016; New South Wales Government Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network, 2017). However, a vital and largely unacknowledged finding revealed by our analysis is that these health problems do not simply co-occur with complex social problems, but are cumulatively, multi-directionally, and intimately linked. The women in this study offered an alternative to individualized, disease-model approaches to health, describing a holistic concept of health as inextricable from their culture, identity, histories, and social and structural circumstances intertwined with those of their family and community. Their stories illustrated the intersection, accumulation, and compounding of IGT, injury, substance use, mental health and SEWB problems, and imprisonment. Some of the women were knowledgeable about their health and provided examples of their resilience and pro-action in addressing health problems and “becoming healthy”. However, it was clear from the women’s stories that maintaining positive health and SEWB in prison and the community was a significant challenge and one that requires specific prison and post-release support programs for Aboriginal women. The lack of rehabilitation services for Aboriginal women was raised very often and we discovered there are no specific services for mothers.

Without question, the main factor affecting the women’s health and SEWB in prison was stress and worry for and about their children. This was a crushing and ongoing trauma for the women that negatively affected their health and the health of their families and communities. More than 80% of Aboriginal women in prison are mothers and many Aboriginal women also have primary caring responsibilities for children in their extended family (Bartels, 2012; Lawrie, 2003; Yeo, 2003). The incarceration of Aboriginal women causes IGT and disadvantage, including a current over-representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care (McMillen Dowell, Mejia, Preen, & Segal, 2018). The latter directly relates to the incarceration of Aboriginal mothers whose offending behavior itself is a response to personal, intergenerational, and cultural trauma (McCausland & Baldry, 2013; Segrave & Carlton, 2010). There has been a steady increase in the number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home-care in NSW (New South Wales Government Family and Community Services, 2018) as well as in juvenile detention (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016). For many of these women, this is also their story, as they report multiple childhood traumas including separation from family as children. The damage to health caused by multiple episodes of incarceration, separation, and worry about children and family is affected further by the lack of avenues to regain access to children if housing and social support are lost (Baldry, 2009).

The need for prison and post-release services addressing the barriers Aboriginal mothers face in maintaining custody, sustaining contact, and regaining access to their children after prison is a key message coming out of the interviews in this study in terms of improving the health and SEWB of Aboriginal women and their families and communities. For Aboriginal women in prison and post-release, this is one of the most significant perpetuators of ongoing, compounding, and accumulative trauma, impacting mental health and SEWB, patterns of substance use, and contact with the criminal justice system. In prison, this is resulting in increased mental health problems, contact with prison health services, and problematizing responses such as psychiatric medication. This lack of access to culturally safe and effective treatment experienced by Aboriginal women in prison is in violation of the United Nations’ basic principles for the treatment of prisoners (United Nations General Assembly 1990).

Access to other critical forms of social and cultural capital are also essential to breaking cycles of negative compounding and accumulative disadvantage and for building health and SEWB protective factors. Several women in this study identified the need for housing, education, training, and employment in bridging the barriers to addressing their health and SEWB and breaking cycles of incarceration. Previous studies with Aboriginal people show that these forms of ‘bridging capital’ are associated with improved health outcomes by linking people to resources that can improve socioeconomic status (Browne-Yung, Ziersch, Baum, & Gallaher, 2013). Spaces to connect with culture were also identified by the women as critical to healing. This reinforces the findings of previous studies showing that cultural identity and engagement are vital forms of social capital for improving health and reducing health and incarceration risk factors (Dockery, 2010; Shepherd, Delgado, Sherwood, & Paradies, 2018).

Overall, our findings indicate that a preventive and gender and culturally specific approach driven by Aboriginal women’s knowledge and unique conceptualizations of health and SEWB is vital to effective health and social service provision in prison and post-release planning and to breaking cycles of health and social inequity, child removal, and incarceration. The findings support recommendations made 15 years ago in the Speak Out Speak Strong report and a more recent study on Aboriginal Australians with mental and cognitive disability in prisons, which advocated for community-led, self-determining, gendered, and holistic approaches to their complex support needs (Baldry et al., 2015; Baldry et al., 2016). The reiteration of findings of these previous studies signifies the urgent need to address this limitation of current services with culturally and gender informed and accessible services for Aboriginal women in prison.

In particular, tailored interventions that target the intersection and accumulative aspects of health and SEWB by assisting women in building health and SEWB protective factors in addition to addressing trauma and substance use are needed to reverse the negative compounding and accumulative impacts of multiple health and social disadvantages. This will require targeting discriminatory practices and policies and implementing accessible, culturally informed programs, and particularly programs accessible to Aboriginal women in prison on remand. Being in prison on remand is typically an exclusion criteria for prison programs and has been associated with increased likelihood of children being removed if women do not have time to arrange care for their children before they are incarcerated (McMillen Dowell et al., 2018). Committed and continuous support from health and social support service providers working with Aboriginal women who have experienced incarceration acknowledging the context of Aboriginal health and willingness to work with Aboriginal concepts of health and well-being is also needed.

Limitations

The findings of this study may not be generalizable due to the convenience sampling method applied. However, the strength of this study was the use of Indigenous methodology and the engagement of a large sample of Aboriginal women to share their stories and knowledge about the health and SEWB of Aboriginal women in prison in NSW, a subject on which there are significant gaps in knowledge. The research interviews were subjected to the interpretation of the research team; however, a number of procedures were implemented to ensure rigor in the data analysis including multiple rounds of coding and theorizing by the research team. Codes and themes were workshopped by the researchers and presented to the PAG and a participant focus group for their interpretation and as a process of external validation. The expert knowledge of the PAG and senior Aboriginal researcher in NSW informed the research throughout and was privileged in the data interpretation and analysis.

Conclusion

Health is a socially and culturally embedded concept for Aboriginal women, and women’s perspectives on what it is to be healthy are central to their experience of health and health care in prison. There is an urgent imperative to address the accumulation of poor health and social and structural determinants perpetuated by ongoing colonization and discrimination of Aboriginal people and experienced by incarcerated Aboriginal women. Critically, investment in preventive and diversion interventions driven by the knowledge and priorities of Aboriginal women and their communities would provide opportunities for healing and improving/optimizing the SEWB of Aboriginal women to begin to break the cycle of intergenerational and compounding disadvantage and trauma.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors extend their greatest thanks to the courageous Aboriginal women who shared their stories with them for this research. They also thank the expert project advisory group of Aboriginal women who guided this study in NSW and the following Aboriginal community organizations and experts who supported this project: Waminda South Coast Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation, Nowra Circle Sentencing, Wirringa Baiya, Mudgin-Gal, Walla Mulla Family and Community Support, SHINE for Kids Kempsey, Durri Aboriginal Corporation Medical Service Kempsey, Kempsey Aboriginal Community Liaison Officer, and Broken Hill Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention Legal Service. They also thank Corrective Services NSW, the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network, and the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council. Acknowledgements also extend to the other members of the project grant team: Tony Butler, Marisa Gilles, Jocelyn Jones, Michael Levy, and Mandy Wilson.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Australia project grant (Grant Number 630653).

ORCID iD

Sacha Kendall

Author Biographies

Sacha Kendall is a post-doctoral research fellow and critcal public health researcher in the Australian Centre for Public and Population Health Research, University of Technology Sydney.

Stacey Lighton is a full-time PhD student in the Faculty of Health (Public Health), University of Technology Sydney.

Juanita Sherwood is a wiradjuri woman academic/researcher and associate dean indigenous at the Faculty of Medicine & Health University of Sydney. She has been an activist and change agent in Indigenous health over the last 25 years.

Eileen Baldry is deputy vice chancellor Equity Diversity and Inclusion and professor of criminology UNSW Sydney.

Elizabeth Sullivan is a professor of public health and leads a research program focusing on vulnerable and underserved reproductive populations. She is committed to disrupting the criminogenic cycle through improving the health and wellbeing of mothers in contact with the criminal justice system and post-release through impactful research.

References

Abbott

Lloyd

Chandni

Malera-Bandjalan

Baldry

McEntyre

. . . Harris

M. F.

(2018). Do programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people leaving prison meet their health and social support needs? Australian Journal of Rural Health, 26(1), 6–13. doi:10.1111/ajr.12396

Aday

R. H.

Dye

M. H.

Kaiser

A. M.

(2014). Examining the traumatic effects of sexual victimization on the health of incarcerated women. Women & Criminal Justice, 24, 341–361. doi:10.1080/08974454.2014.909758

Anthony

(2013). Indigenous people, crime and punishment. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Atkinson

Nelson

Brooks

Atkinson

Ryan

(2014). Addressing individual and community transgenerational trauma. In Dudgeon

Milroy

Walker

(Eds.), Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice (2nd ed., pp. 289–306). Western Australia: Telethon Institute for Child Health.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2012). Prisoners in Australia 2012—Media release: Women prisoners increasing at a faster rate than men. Canberra: Author.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2013). Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Canberra: Author.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2017). Prisoners in Australia 2017. Canberra: Author.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2018). Corrective services Australia. Canberra: Author.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2012). The mental health of prison entrants in Australia 2010. Canberra: Author.

10.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2016). Young people in child protection and under youth justice supervision 2013-14. Canberra: Author.

11.

Baldry

(2009). Home safely: Aboriginal women post-prison and their children. Indigenous Law Bulletin, 7(15), 14–17. Retrieved from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/IndigLawB/2009/44.html

12.

Baldry

(2010). Women in transition: From prison to . . . . Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 22, 253–268. Retrieved from http://kirra.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/CICrimJust/2010/31.pdf

13.

Baldry

(2013). Continuing systemic discrimination: Indigenous women exiting prison. In Carlton

Segrave

(Eds.), Women exiting prison: Critical essays on gender, post-release support and survival (pp. 98–116). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

14.

Baldry

(2017). People with multiple and complex support needs, disadvantage and criminal justice systems: 40 years after the Sackville report. In Edgeworth

Durbach

Sentas

(Eds.), Law and poverty in Australia: 40 years after the poverty commission (pp. 103-118). Sydney: The Federation Press.

15.

Baldry

Cunneen

(2014). Imprisoned indigenous women and the shadow of colonial patriarchy. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 47, 276–298. doi:10.1177/0004865813503351

16.

Baldry

McCausland

Dowse

McEntyre

(2015). A predictable and preventable path: Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities in the criminal justice system. Retrieved from https://www.mhdcd.unsw.edu.au/

17.

Baldry

McCausland

Dowse

McEntyre

MacGillivray

(2016). “It’s just a big vicious cycle that swallows them up”: Indigenous people with mental and cognitive disabilities in the criminal justice system. Indigenous Law Bulletin, 8(22), 10–16.

18.

Baldry

Ruddock

Taylor

(2008). Aboriginal women with dependent children leaving prison project: Needs analysis report. Retrieved from http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/fapi/datastream/unsworks:4597/SOURCE1

19.

Balfour

(2012). Do law reforms matter? Exploring the victimization–criminalization continuum in the sentencing of Aboriginal women in Canada. International Review of Victimology, 19, 85–102. doi:10.1177/0269758012447213

20.

Barrett

Teesson

Mills

K. L.

(2014). Associations between substance use, post-traumatic stress disorder and the perpetration of violence: A longitudinal investigation. Addictive Behaviors, 39, 1075–1080. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2014.03.003

21.

Bartels

(2012). Painting the picture of indigenous women in custody in Australia. QUT Law and Justice Journal, 12(2), 1–17. doi:10.5204/qutlr.v12i2.487

22.

Bastos

Harnois

Paradies

(2018). Health care barriers, racism, and intersectionality in Australia. Social Science &Medicine, 199, 209–218. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.05.010

23.

Berger

Sarnyai

(2015). “More than skin deep”: Stress neurobiology and mental health consequences of racial discrimination. Stress, 18, 1–10. doi:10.3109/10253890.2014.989204

24.

Bessarab

Ng’andu

(2010). Yarning about yarning as a legitimate method in indigenous research. International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 3, 37–50. doi:10.5204/ijcis.v3i1.57

25.

Binswanger

I. A.

Merrill

J. O.

Krueger

P. M.

White

M. C.

Booth

R. E.

Elmore

J. G.

(2010). Gender differences in chronic medical, psychiatric, and substance-dependence disorders among jail inmates. American Journal of Public Health, 100, 476–482. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2008.149591

26.

Blagg

(2008). Crime, Aboriginality and the decolonisation of justice. Leichardt: Hawkins Press.

27.

Bowleg

(2012). The problem with the phrase women and minorities: Intersectionality-an important theoretical framework for public health. American Journal of Public Health, 102, 1267–1273. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2012.300750

28.

Braun

Clarke

(2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

29.

Brown

(2012). Addressing cardiovascular inequalities among indigenous Australians. Global Cardiology Science and Practice, 2012, Article 2. doi:10.5339/gcsp.2012.2

30.

Browne-Yung

Ziersch

Baum

Gallaher

(2013). Aboriginal Australians’ experience of social capital and its relevance to health and wellbeing in urban settings. Social Science &Medicine, 97, 20–28. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.08.002

31.

Butler

Allnutt

Kariminia

Cain

(2007). Mental health status of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian prisoners. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 41, 429–435. doi:10.1080/00048670701261210

32.

Butler

Lim

Callander

(2011). National prison entrants’ bloodborne virus and risk behaviour survey report 2004, 2007 and 2010. Retrieved from https://kirby.unsw.edu.au/report/national-prison-entrants-bloodborne-virus-and-risk-behaviour-survey-report-2004-2007-and-2010

33.

Calma

Dudgeon

Bray

(2017). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing and mental health. Australian Psychologist, 52, 255–260. doi:10.1111/ap.12299

34.

Carlton

Segrave

(2014). “They died of a broken heart”: Connecting women’s experiences of trauma and criminalisation to survival and death post-imprisonment. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 53, 270–289. doi:10.1111/hojo.12066

35.

Charmaz

(2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

36.

Coker

A. L.

Hopenhayn

DeSimone

C. P.

Bush

H. M.

Crofford

(2009). Violence against women raises risk of cervical cancer. Journal of Women’s Health, 18, 1179–1185. doi:10.1089/jwh.2008.1048

37.

Dannefer

(2003). Cumulative advantage/disadvantage and the life course: Cross-fertilizing age and social science theory. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Biological Sciences & Medical Sciences, 58, S327–S337. doi:10.1093/geronb/58.6.S327

38.

DeHart

D. D.

(2008). Pathways to prison: Impact of victimization in the lives of incarcerated women. Violence Against Women, 14, 1362–1381. doi:10.1177/1077801208327018

39.

Dockery

A. M.

(2010). Culture and wellbeing: The case of indigenous Australians. Social Indicators Research, 99, 315–332. doi:10.1007/s11205-010-9582-y

40.

Douglas

Plugge

(2008). The health needs of imprisoned female juvenile offenders: The views of the young women prisoners and youth justice professionals. International Journal of Prisoner Health, 4(2), 66–76. doi:10.1080/17449200802038256

41.

Dudgeon

Wright

Paradies

Garvey

Walker

(2014). Aboriginal social, cultural and historical contexts. In Dudgeon

Milroy

Walker

(Eds.), Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice (2nd ed., pp. 3-24). Barton: Attorney-General’s Department Australia.

42.

Dupre

(2008). Educational differences in health risks and illness over the life course: A test of cumulative disadvantage theory. Social Science Research, 37, 1253–1266. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2008.05.007

43.

Emerson

A. M.

(2018). Strategizing and fatalizing: Self and other in the trauma narratives of justice-involved women. Qualitative Health Research, 28, 873–887. doi:10.1177/1049732318758634

44.

Ferdinand

Paradies

Kelaher

(2012). Mental health impacts of racial discrimination in Victorian Aboriginal communities: The localities embracing and accepting diversity (LEAD) experiences of racism survey. Melbourne: The Lowitja Institute.

45.

Ferraro

K. F.

Schafer

M. H.

Wilkinson

L. R.

(2016). Childhood disadvantage and health problems in middle and later life: Early imprints on physical health? American Sociological Review, 81, 107–133. doi:10.1177/0003122415619617

46.

Forsyth

S. J.

Alati

Ober

Williams

G. M.

Kinner

S. A.

(2014). Striking subgroup differences in substance-related mortality after release from prison. Addiction, 109, 1676–1683. doi:10.1111/add.12646

47.

Foster

Hagan

(2007). Incarceration and intergenerational social exclusion. Social Problems, 54, 399–433. doi:10.1525/sp.2007.54.4.399

48.

Fredericks

Adams

Finlay

Fletcher

Andy

Briggs

Hall

(2011). Engaging the practice of yarning in action research. Action Learning and Action Research Journal, 17(2), 12–24.

49.

Gisev

Gibson

Larney

Kimber

Williams

Clifford

. . . Degenhardt

(2014). Offending, custody and opioid substitution therapy treatment utilisation among opioid-dependent people in contact with the criminal justice system: Comparison of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. BMC Public Health, 14, Article 920. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-920

50.

Goodman

Fleming

Markwick

Morrison

Lagimodiere

Kerr

, & Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society. (2017). They treated me like crap and I know it was because I was Native”: The healthcare experiences of Aboriginal peoples living in Vancouver’s inner city. Social Science and Medicine, 178, 87–94. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.01.053

51.

Goulding

(2006). Breaking the cycle: A training program for “Urban” Aboriginal women exiting prison in the Perth metropolitan area. Perth: Centre for Social and Community Research, Murdoch University.

52.

Grace

Krom

Maling

Butler

Midford

Simpson

(2013,June). Review of Indigenous offender health (updated). Australian Indigenous Health Reviews, 12, 1–24. Retrieved from http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/offender_health_review

53.

Grella

C. E.

Lovinger

Warda

U. S.

(2013). Relationships among trauma exposure, familial characteristics, and PTSD: A case-control study of women in prison and in the general population. Women & Criminal Justice, 23, 63–79. doi:10.1080/08974454.2013.743376

54.

Harner

H. M.

Burgess

A. W.

(2011). Using a trauma-informed framework to care for incarcerated women. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 40, 469–476. doi:10.1111/j.1552-6909.2011.01259.x

55.

Harner

H. M.

Riley

(2013). The impact of incarceration on women’s mental health: Responses from women in a maximum-security prison. Qualitative Health Research, 23, 26–42. doi:10.1177/1049732312461452

56.

Harris

Martin

Filek

Macaulay

Buxton

J. A.

Buchanan

. . . Ramsden

(2015). Familial support impacts incarcerated women’s housing stability. Housing Care and Support, 18(3/4), 80–88. doi:10.1108/HCS-05-2014-0012

57.

Heffernan

Andersen

Davidson

Kinner

S. A.

(2015a). The family business: Improving the understanding and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder among incarcerated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Melbourne: Beyond Blue.

58.

Heffernan

Andersen

Davidson

Kinner

S. A.

(2015b). PTSD among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custody in Australia: Prevalence and correlates. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 28, 523–530. doi:10.1002/jts.22051

59.

Heffernan

Andersen

Dev

Kinner

(2012). Prevalence of mental illness among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland prisons. Medical Journal of Australia, 197, 37–41. doi:10.5694/mja11.11352

60.

Heffernan

Andersen

Kinner

(2009). The insidious problem inside: Mental health problems of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in custody. Australasian Psychiatry, 17(1, suppl.), S41–S46. doi:10.1080/10398560902948696

61.

Honorato

Caltabiano

Clough

A. R.

(2016). From trauma to incarceration: Exploring the trajectory in a qualitative study in male prison inmates from North Queensland, Australia. Health & Justice, 4, Article 3. doi:10.1186/s40352-016-0034-x

62.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Australia. (1997). Bringing them home: National inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Sydney: Author. Retrieved from https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.pdf

63.

Indig

Gear

Wilhelm

(2016). Comorbid substance use disorders and mental health disorders among New Zealand prisoners. Wellington: New Zealand Department of Corrections.

64.

Indig

McEntyre

Page

Ross

(2010). 2009 NSW inmate health survey: Aboriginal health report. Sydney: Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network.

65.

Jones

Day

(2011). Mental health, criminal justice and culture: Some ways forward? Australasian Psychiatry, 19, 325–330. doi:10.3109/10398562.2011.579613

66.

Kariminia

Butler

Jones

Law

(2012). Increased mortality among Indigenous persons during and after release from prison in New South Wales. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 36, 274–280. doi:10.1111/j.1753-6405.2012.00844.x

67.

Kariminia

Butler

Levy

(2007). Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health differentials in Australian prisoners. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 31, 366–371. doi:10.1111/j.1753-6405.2007.00089.x

68.

Kendall

Sunderland

Barnett

Nalder

Matthews

(2011). Beyond the rhetoric of participatory research in Indigenous communities: Advances in Australia over the last decade. Qualitative Health Research, 21, 1719–1728. doi:10.1177/1049732311418124

69.

Larney

Topp

Indig

O’Driscoll

Greenberg

(2012). A cross-sectional survey of prevalence and correlates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among prisoners in New South Wales, Australia. BMC Public Health, 12, Article 14. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-12-14

70.

Lawrie

(2003). Speak out speak strong: Researching the needs of Aboriginal women in custody. Sydney: Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council.

71.

Lippert

A. M.

Lee

B. A.

(2015). Stress, coping, and mental health differences among homeless people. Sociological Inquiry, 85, 343–374. doi:10.1111/soin.12080

72.

Lloyd

J. E.

Delaney-Thiele

Abbott

Baldry

McEntyre

Reath

. . . Harris

M. F.

(2015). The role of primary health care services to better meet the needs of Aboriginal Australians transitioning from prison to the community. BMC Family Practice, 16(86), 1–10. doi:10.1186/s12875-015-0303-0

73.

Lopes

J. L.

Bastos

L. A.

Monteiro

Silva

(2016). Working children and adolescents and the vicious circle of poverty from the perspective of Gunnar Myrdal’s theory of circular cumulative causation: Analysis and implementation of a probit model to Brazil. International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation, 10, 1908–1913. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1124706

74.

Lynch

S. M.

DeHart

D. D.

Belknap

J. E.

Green

B. L.

Dass-Brailsford

Johnson

K. A.

Whalley

(2014). A multisite study of the prevalence of serious mental Illness, PTSD, and substance use disorders of women in jail. Psychiatric Services, 65, 670–674. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.201300172

75.

Lynch

S. M.

Fritch

Heath

N. M.

(2012). Looking beneath the surface: The nature of incarcerated women’s experiences of interpersonal violence, treatment needs, and mental health. Feminist Criminology, 7, 381–400. doi:10.1177/1557085112439224

76.

MacGillivray

Baldry

(2015). Australian indigenous women’s offending patterns. Sydney: Indigenous Justice Clearinghouse.

77.

Marmot

M. G.

(2005). The status syndrome: How social standing affects our health and longevity. New York: Owl Books, Henry Holt.

78.

Martin

Buxton

J. A.

Smith

Hislop

(2012). The scope of the problem: The health of incarcerated women in BC. British Colombia Medical Journal, 54, 502–508. Retrieved from https://www.bcmj.org/articles/scope-problem-health-incarcerated-women-bc

79.

McCausland

Baldry

(2013). Incarcerated Indigenous Australian Mothers. Maintaining Patriarchal Colonization. In Eljdupovic

Bromwich

R. J.

(Eds.), Incarcerated mothers oppression and resistance (pp. 121–136). Bradford, UK: Demeter Press.

80.

McGlue

(2016). Trauma hiding in plain view: The case for trauma informed practice in women’s prisons. Practice: The New Zealand Corrections Journal, 4(2). Retrieved from https://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/research_and_statistics/journal/volume_4_issue_2_december_2016/trauma_hiding_in_plain_view_the_case_for_trauma_informed_practice_in_womens_prisons.html

81.

McKendrick

Brooks

Hudson

Thorpe

Bennett

(2018). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander healing programs: A literature review. Retrieved from https://healingfoundation.org.au//app/uploads/2017/02/Aboriginal-and-Torres-Strait-Islander-Healing-Programs-A-Literature-Review.pdf

82.

McMillen Dowell

Mejia

G. C.

Preen

D. B.

Segal

. (2018). Maternal incarceration, child protection, and infant mortality: A descriptive study of infant children of women prisoners in Western Australia. Health and Justice, 6(2), 1–12. doi:10.1186/s40352-018-0060-y

83.

National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party. (1989). National Aboriginal health strategy. Canberra: Author.

84.

National Health and Medical Research Council, Commonwealth of Australia. (2018). Keeping research on track II: A companion document to “Ethical conduct in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities: Guidelines for researchers and stakeholders.” Canberra: National Health and Medical Research Council.

85.

New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. (2017). Quarterly update: March 2017. Sydney: Author.

86.

New South Wales Government Family and Community Services. (2018). Quarterly report on services for children and young people—2015-2016. Retrieved from https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/download?file=374566

87.

New South Wales Government Inspector of Custodial Services. (2015). Full house: The growth of the inmate population in NSW. Sydney: Inspector of Custodial Services.

88.

New South Wales Government Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network. (2017). Network patient health survey—Aboriginal people’s health report 2015. Malabar, New South Wales: Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network.

89.

New South Wales Ministry of Health. (2018). NSW clinical guidelines: Treatment of opioid dependence 2018. North Sydney: Author.

90.

Ogloff

J. R. P.

Patterson

Cutajar

Adams

Thomas

Halacas

(2013). Koori prisoner mental health and cognitive function study. Melbourne: Department of Justice, Victoria.

91.

Pais

(2014). Cumulative structural disadvantage and racial health disparities: The pathways of childhood socioeconomic influence. Demography, 51, 1729–1753. doi:10.1007/s13524-014-0330-9

92.

Paradies

(2006). A systematic review of empirical research on self-reported racism and health. International Journal of Epidemiology, 35, 888–901. doi:10.1093/ije/dyl056

93.

Parker

Milroy

(2014). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health: An overview. In Dudgeon

Milroy

Walker

(Eds.), Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice (2nd ed., pp. 113-124). Barton: Attorney-General’s Department Australia.

94.

Priest

N. C.

Paradies

Y. C.

Gunthorpe

Cairney

S. J.

Sayers

S. M.

(2011). Racism as a determinant of social and emotional wellbeing for Aboriginal Australian youth. Medical Journal of Australia, 194, 546–550. Retrieved from https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2011/194/10/racism-determinant-social-and-emotional-wellbeing-aboriginal-australian-youth

95.

Rigney

(1999). Internationalization of an Indigenous anticolonial cultural critique of research methodologies: A guide to Indigenist research methodology and its principles. Wicazo Sa Review, 14, 109–121. doi:10.2307/1409555

96.

Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. (1991). Final report. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.

97.

Rynne

Cassematis

(2015). Assessing the prison experience for Australian first peoples: A prospective research approach. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4, 96–112. doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.v4i1.208

98.

Sapers

(2015). Annual report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator 2014-2015. Ottawa: Office of the Correctional Investigator.

99.

Schofield

P. W.

Butler

T. G.

Hollis

S. J.

Smith

N. E.

Lee

S. J.

Kelso

W. M.

(2006). Traumatic brain injury among Australian prisoners: Rates, recurrence and sequelae. Brain Injury, 20, 499–506. doi:10.1080/02699050600664749

100.

Segrave

Carlton

(2010). Women, trauma, criminalisation and imprisonment. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 22, 297–305.

101.

Shepherd

Delgado

R. H.

Paradies

(2018). Inter-relationships among cultural identity, discrimination, distress, agency, and safety among indigenous people in custody. International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 17, 111–121. doi:10.1080/14999013.2018.1431338

102.

Shepherd

Delgado

R. H.

Sherwood

Paradies

(2018). The impact of indigenous cultural identity and cultural engagement on violent offending. BMC Public Health, 18, Article 50. doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4603-2

103.

Shepherd

Ogloff

Thomas

(2016). Are Australian prisons meeting the needs of indigenous offenders? Health & Justice, 4, Article 13. doi:10.1186/s40352-016-0045-7

104.

Sherwood

(2013). Colonisation—It’s bad for your health: The context of Aboriginal health. Contemporary Nurse, 46, 28–40. doi:10.5172/conu.2013.46.1.28

105.

Sherwood

Kendall

(2013). Reframing spaces by building relationships: Community collaborative participatory action research with Aboriginal mothers in prison. Contemporary Nurse, 46, 84–95. doi:10.5172/conu.2013.46.1.83

106.

Sherwood

Lighton

Dundas

French

Link-Gordon

Smith

Anthony

(2015). Who are the experts here? Recognition of Aboriginal women and community workers in research and beyond. Alternative: An International Journal of Indigenous People, 11, 177–190. doi:10.1177/117718011501100207

107.

Social Health Reference Group for National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council and National Mental Health Working Group. (2004). Social and emotional well being framework: A national strategic framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ mental health and social and emotional well-being: 2004-2009. Canberra: Department of Health and Ageing.

108.

Sullivan

E. A.

Kendall

Chang

Baldry

Zeki

Gilles

Sherwood

. (2019). Aboriginal mothers in prison in Australia: a study of social, emotional and physical wellbeing. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 43, 241–247. doi:10.1111/1753-6405.12892

109.

United Nations General Assembly. (1990, December 14). Basic principles for the treatment of prisoners (A/RES/45/111 45/111). Retrieved from http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/45/a45r111.htm 30th November 2018

110.

Walker

Fredericks

Mills

Anderson

(2014). “Yarning” as a method for community-based health research with Indigenous women: the Indigenous women’s wellness research program. Health Care for Women International, 35, 1216–1226. doi:10.1080/07399332.2013.815754

111.

Walmsley

(2016). World prison population list. London: International Centre for Prison Studies.

112.

Walmsley

(2017). World female imprisonment list. London: International Centre for Prison Studies.

113.

Williams

W. H.

Mewse

A. J.

Tonks

Mills

Burgess

C. N. W.

Cordan

(2010). Traumatic brain injury in a prison population: Prevalence and risk for re-offending. Brain Injury, 24, 1184–1188. doi:10.3109/02699052.2010.495697

114.

Wilson

Jones

Butler

Simpson

Gilles

Baldry

. . . Sullivan

(2017). Violence in the lives of incarcerated Aboriginal mothers in Western Australia. SAGE Open, 2017, 1–16. doi:10.1177/2158244016686814

115.

Wilson

Jones

Gilles

(2014). The Aboriginal mothers in prison project: An example of how consultation can inform research practice. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2014(2), 28–39.

116.

Yeo

S. S.

(2003). Bonding and attachment of Australian Aboriginal children. Child Abuse Review, 12, 292–304. doi:10.1002/car.817