DPP v Jones [2022] VCC 1939

• At sentence proceedings for indigenous offender relied on Aboriginal Community Justice Report to ‘authoritatively analyse an Aboriginal person’s circumstances of deprivation and place this into a broader community, cultural and historical context’: at [49]

[51] The history of your background of deprivation begins with a review of Barkindji history, to provide an understanding of the enduring and inherited trauma in Barkindji descendants today.

…

[55] The result is a detailed account of how your personal history, and the systemic racism imposed upon Barkindji people over the last five generations, merge. Just one example is how your whole life has been framed by housing insecurity and homelessness. While you have often had places to sleep, your presence in other people’s homes often causes conflict, and has left you feeling unwelcome and unwanted. The report writers observe that displacement is a recurring theme in your life and a distressing parallel to your Barkindji ancestors, who were subjected to direct and indirect dispersal due to colonial policies and violence.

[56] There is a rigour and solidity to this report; it gives me the evidentiary basis to accept that intergenerational trauma is relevant to both your circumstances and to the content of your offending now before me, and I take it into account in moderating my assessment of your moral culpability for your offending, and in applying more generally the Bugmy principles. I also take into account your willing and courageous participation in the report’s construction.

[57] Having regard to the content of the report, I have a much more informed appreciation of the matters personal to you, and I also have evidence of the profound and structural disadvantages you have endured, and which inform your responses to the world around you. I give these matters full weight in my sentencing decision.