Western Australian penal culture and indigenous over representation: Evaluating 25 years of law, policy and practice

In 2018, the UWA Law Review celebrates its 70th anniversary. The question remains, however, if there is much to celebrate if we review the last 70 years of legislative and policy change, particularly in Western Australia? If we take a broad look at the criminal justice system from a criminological perspective, there is probably not a lot to celebrate, as we will explain in our contribution. For the purposes of this article, we will have to be somewhat more modest than to review the last 70 years and will instead focus on changes over the last 25 years. The reason for this is the lack of reliable data and other recorded sources. Also, for reasons of practicality, expertise and word count, we focus our contribution on the particular situation of Western Australia in the broader Australian context.