willingness to seriously engage with an Aboriginal identity when offender’s determining both the level of the culpability and the offender’s appropriateness of alternative sanctions. In other cases, however, courts have given relatively little attention to an Aboriginality, or explicitly offender’s disclaimed the relevance of an Aboriginality. offender’s One of the most influential decisions since Neal was R v Fernando where Wood J of the Supreme Court of NSW reviewed a (‘Fernando’), number of earlier authorities and articulated eight propositions about the relationship between Aboriginality and sentencing. His Honour took into account the social and economic deprivation the particular Aboriginal offender had experienced, the problems of substance abuse in the community he came from and acknowledged that a term of imprisonment could be a particularly harsh and alienating punishment for an Aboriginal person from a remote community. In sentencing Mr Fernando, Wood J stated that the relationship between violence and alcohol abuse in Aboriginal communities requires than of a ‘more subtle remedies imprisonment’. Another example sentencing decision involving close consideration of an offender’s Aboriginality was the dissent of Eames JA in R v Fuller-Cust In (‘Fuller-Cust’). that case Eames JA explored the complex nexus between aspects of childhood development, colonialism, cultural identity and criminal offending. His Honour held that a failure to take into account the ‘emotional stress’ caused by the removal from his parents as a child and the offender’s subsequent cultural dislocation he experienced would be to sentence him as other than the most important aspect of Eames ‘someone himself’. Arguably
willingness to seriously engage with an offender’s Aboriginal identity when determining both the level of the offender’s culpability and the appropriateness of alternative sanctions. In other cases, however, courts have given relatively little attention to an offender’s Aboriginality, or explicitly disclaimed the relevance of an offender’s Aboriginality. One of the most influential decisions since Neal was R v Fernando (‘Fernando’), where Wood J of the Supreme Court of NSW reviewed a number of earlier authorities and articulated eight propositions about the relationship between Aboriginality and sentencing. His Honour took into account the social and economic deprivation the particular Aboriginal offender had experienced, the problems of substance abuse in the community he came from and acknowledged that a term of imprisonment could be a particularly harsh and alienating punishment for an Aboriginal person from a remote community. In sentencing Mr Fernando, Wood J stated that the relationship between violence and alcohol abuse in Aboriginal communities requires ‘more subtle remedies than imprisonment’. Another example of a sentencing decision involving close consideration of an offender’s Aboriginality was the dissent of Eames JA in R v Fuller-Cust (‘Fuller-Cust’). In that case Eames JA explored the complex nexus between aspects of childhood development, colonialism, cultural identity and criminal offending. His Honour held that a failure to take into account the ‘emotional stress’ caused by the offender’s removal from his parents as a child and the subsequent cultural dislocation he experienced would be to sentence him as ‘someone other than himself’. Arguably the most important aspect of Eames
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