title: The recruitment and retention of indigenous criminal justice agency staff in an Australian state.
abstract: In Australia, as in other countries that have experienced colonisation, indigenous people are massively overrepresented in all stages of the criminal justice system. If criminal justice agencies are to provide culturally responsive and effective services to this group, it is important that they employ significant numbers of indigenous staff across all levels of their organisations. Despite the positive intentions of many justice agencies to increase the proportion of indigenous staff members they employ, the numbers remain low. In this article, we explore some of the possible reasons for this by reporting the results of focus groups conducted with existing indigenous justice agency employees. The employees raised a number of issues relevant to recruitment and retention. These are discussed in terms of their potential value in improving justice agency indigenous recruitment and retention strategies.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of South Australia, North Terrace, Adelaide 5000, South Australia, Australia.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Day
authors.forename: Glenn
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Giles
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.forename: Von
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Sanderson
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D003415:Crime / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003416:Criminal Law / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D016495:Police / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D044382:Population Groups / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012153:Retention, Psychology