Brave leaders and a broken-down machine: public-administration and the failure to reduce first nations incarceration in Australia ...

• Main Author: Jones, Michael William
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Oxford 2021
• Subjects: Criminology; FOS Law; Australia, Northern; Australia, Southeastern; Politics, Practical; Public policy; First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5287/ora-nzgodzzq4; https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:64eeb025-7517-4dc8-81e7-717acc295300

In 1992 the Commonwealth of Australia and all State and Territory Governments committed to reducing the incarceration rate of First Nations Australians. But, over thirty years that policy response has failed. Between 1991 and 2020, the incarceration rate of First Nations Australians more than doubled: from 1,122 per 100,000 adults in 1991 to 2,285 in 2020. This thesis asks whether failings in the Australian system of governance – the machinery of government – were a cause of the failed policy response. It focuses upon two weak mechanisms within the governance of the policy response: the mechanism of policy change at the elite level and the mechanism of policy effect at the local level. Using the methodology of process-tracing, the thesis builds an explanatory causal model for each of these mechanisms, which it uses to gain insights into where the mechanisms broke down by comparing cases where the mechanisms operated to those where they did not. What emerges is a relational account of failing governance in a ...