Petition calls for release of police video of Indigenous man’s death in custody
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-27/petition-for-police-video-of-steven-nixon-mckellar-death/106497678?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other
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Let’s call it for what it is. The family wants the court of public opinion to find the police guilty based on a confronting video instead of accepting the findings of a medically-trained coroner’s forensic examination.
The more I meet people who have been incarcerated and the more I think about the purpose of prisons as punishment, the more I am convinced they do more harm than good for wider society. Imagine someone commits a crime, an awful mistake, a stupid choice. We throw them in prison, they lose their job, their home (unpaid rental or mortgage defaults), their friends stop talking to them, no one trusts them enough to hire them… When they get out, the only way to survive it to convince good people to take a leap of faith in trusting them, or turn to worse crime.
Then I look at the cohort I meet when I visit prisons. They are primarily indigenous people and poor people. The ex-leader of the SA Liberals got a fine for supplying cocaine, something poorer people get proper prison time for. I’ve seen child protection reports where children were removed due to living arrangements better than mine at home, with the difference being that I am white and they were indigenous. There are actual politicians right now who want to make homelessness illegal; where are they supposed to go?!
Justice has to serve the community, not punish poor and indigenous people.
Probably not a good sign if you can’t automatically know which death in custody this headline refers to.
Rape, assault, murder is not “an awful mistake, a stupid choice.”
Remember, Police Officers and Correctional Service Offers serve as ‘role models’ in our ‘correctional system’
So when officers are violent or corrupt or disrespectful then we eventually see convicts learning that violence, corruption and disrespect is justifiable.
Why do you think we have a high recidivism rate?