When one is incarcerated, a community is sentenced. Justice, for many, is imagined as courtrooms, verdicts and institutionalised systems designed to maintain order. But for those of us impacted by incarceration, justice isn’t found in these spaces. It exists in the relationships that hold us through the hardest times, in the communities and spaces of love that step in when systems fall short. On the World Day of Social Justice, let’s talk about kinship incarceration and the ignored ripple effect of imprisonment through extended family networks.
At Yung Prodigy, a youth-led organisation dedicated to liberating young people from the impacts of the carceral system, we’ve seen firsthand how incarceration doesn’t just affect individuals, it fractures communities. But these communities also hold the answer to true justice through care, connection and cultural wisdom. For context, I’m the founding director at Yung Prodigy and the image above is of me.
Kinship incarceration recognises that when a community member is imprisoned, it affects more than their immediate family. In many cultures, family isn’t confined to biological ties or legal definitions. An Aunty can be seen as a mother figure or a neighbour as a guardian. Indigenous communities have long embraced these broader definitions of kinship, yet our justice system continues to apply rigid, Western frameworks that overlook these realities.
When a caregiver, even an ‘informal’ one, is taken away, the impact echoes. Young people lose not only a supportive figure but also a source of cultural knowledge, emotional grounding and community connection. The system rarely acknowledges these losses. One young person in our program described the experience:
“When my step father became incarcerated it was a very destabilising experience not just for my family but personally and educationally”
The current justice system was never designed with kinship or healing in mind. It focuses on punishment and control, leaving communities to pick up the pieces. In so called Australia, Indigenous communities, who have long understood the importance of kinship. The intergenerational trauma of incarceration continues to tear at these community ties, yet mainstream responses offer little beyond surveillance and punitive measures.
Programs that focus solely on the incarcerated individual or immediate family members miss the larger picture. They fail to see the community elders stepping in to provide meals, the teenagers babysitting younger siblings or the friends offering emotional support. Justice, in these contexts, isn’t about harsher sentences or more surveillance. It’s about resourcing and honouring the care that communities have been providing for generations.
True justice requires more than institutional reform; it demands a shift in perspective and the complete abolishment of oppressive systems. Community care, often dismissed as ‘informal’ is a powerful, practical approach. It recognises that relationships, not punitive measures, hold communities together.
At Yung Prodigy, we’ve seen what happens when young people impacted by incarceration are given space to connect with each other. At a recent retreat, one participant shared how hearing others’ stories helped them feel less isolated:
“I thought it was just me dealing with this,” they said. “Now I know there’s a whole community of us, and we can support each other.”
Community-led arts programs, peer mentoring and storytelling initiatives aren’t just feel-good activities; they’re protective factors against the trauma incarceration leaves behind. These programs create spaces where young people learn that their experiences are valid yet do not define them.
If justice is to serve our communities in a positive way, we need to stop looking to failing systems for solutions. We need to look inward, to the communities who have been practicing care and accountability for generations. Justice comes when we fund grassroots initiatives, support community-led solutions and listen to those living with the impacts of incarceration.
This World Day of Social Justice, let’s redefine what justice means and looks like. Not as a distant, institutional concept but as something nurtured in living rooms, on front porches and in shared meals. Kinship incarceration reminds us that the true heart of justice is not punishment but care. It starts with acknowledging the full breadth of relationships that sustain us, and trusting those relationships to guide us toward a more just world.
Top photo: Pictured is Maia Onyenachi. Source: Supplied
Maia Onyenachi is an Igbo-Australian woman who is the founding director of Yung Prodigy, a grassroots organisation dedicated to liberating young people impacted by kinship incarceration. With an unyielding commitment to social justice, Maia’s work spans the intersections of community development through the arts, agroliberation, anti-racism and transformative justice, both domestically and abroad. Drawing deeply from her lived experience of proximity to the justice system, Maia created Yung Prodigy as a decolonial response to systemic neglect, providing authentic, self determined spaces for the “forgotten victims of crime”.
