Research on the factors underlying high arrest rates among Aboriginal people and the effect of these on employment prospects indicates that if governments are concerned about Aboriginal social and economic wellbeing then a priority should be to ensure that they stay out of the criminal justice system (Hunter 2001; Hunter and Borland 1999). Unfortunately, in the East Kimberley, this has not occurred to date as statistics from the police and Department of Justice indicate high levels of recorded contact with police and subsequent conviction via the courts system.

While precise levels of Aboriginal recidivism are difficult to establish owing to data quality issues, the indication from the statistics available is that almost 650 Aboriginal persons in the Northern East Kimberley were arrested in 2001. Since arrest rates are higher at younger adult ages, this implies that almost one-third of the regional population between 20 and 34 years have been arrested. As for convictions, it is estimated that 75 Aboriginal people from the region would have been committed into custody by the adult lower courts in 2001, and 337 would have received a non-custodial sentence. If these orders were handed to distinct persons (an assumption only, as the actual number is unavailable) then they would be directed at 17% of the regional adult population, while the equivalent proportion for juveniles based on the same assumption would be 15%. In addition to this, an estimated total of 623 monetary fines were handed down to Aboriginal defendants from the region, though again on behalf of how many distinct persons is actually unknown.

Among the factors that contribute to high arrest rates for Aboriginal people, high unemployment (or lack of meaningful work) and poor educational achievement have been identified as the most prominent (Hunter 2001). As we have seen, both of these pre-requisites for high arrest rates are prominent in the region, indeed more so than in most other parts of Western Australia. What is especially pernicious, though, is the existence of feedback mechanisms between arrest and socio-economic conditions whereby the fact of arrest tends to reinforce disadvantage in the very factors that contribute to it. Clearly, there is a cycle here that links recidivism and reduced levels of social and economic participation, but in a fairly complex web. Admittedly, some of these threads are more implicit than explicit in the data.

For example, from the hospital separations data it is apparent that excess use of alcohol is prevalent, so it is not surprising that 62% of respondents to the NATSIS in Wunan region identified alcohol as the main local health problem (ABS 1996: 19). At the same time, high rates of injury reported in hospitalisation data are consistent with levels of assault reported to police, as is the fact that 71% of NATSIS respondents considered family violence to be a major problem (ABS 1996: 57). Such observations point to a cycle of social dysfunction at the family and community level that is reflected in the level of interaction with the criminal justice system. In turn, individual-level efforts to break into the regional labour market may be hampered by the fact that employers (such as ADM) are keen to screen out and review the employability of individuals who have a criminal record that might suggest some risk to their business and duty of care to other workers. Indeed, some perception exists (at the Warmun CDEP, for example) that just having a police record may deter some people from even looking for work. Whether this is so or not, it can certainly be stated that high levels of interaction with the criminal justice system, especially in young adult years, are less than conducive to the steady and progressive acquisition of work skills and experience that are so necessary for successful engagement with the regional economy.