ABSTRACT
In 1976 and 19777 in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, the NSW Prisoners Action Group (PAG), a radical ex-prisoner-based activist group, made an extensive abolitionist submission to the Royal Commission into NSW Prisons which was established in response to the Bathurst prison riot in 1974 and which reported in 1978. This chapter outlines the abolitionist argument put forward in the PAG submission, with particular reference to the notion of “aggregate social harm” which prefigures the later emergence of zemiology. The chapter then considers the aftermath and legacy of the Nagle Inquiry and the PAG submission in the current context of mass incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia, a context which requires confronting the “colonial penal complex” through strategies of Indigenous self-determination, democratic engagement, discursive citizenship and voice.
