This workshop explores how authentic partnerships between custodial services, Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, academia, and people with lived experience are transforming rehabilitation outcomes at Acacia Prison.
Participants will gain insight into an innovative, culturally grounded model that is reducing violence in custody, strengthening reintegration pathways, and embedding Aboriginal leadership into the heart of correctional practice. The presentation highlights collaborations with Aboriginal Elders, researchers, and community organisations to co-design programs, governance approaches, and support models that reflect cultural authority, lived experience, and shared decision-making.
A key focus will be the Indigenous-led research initiative Nobody Has Asked Us Before, which positions Aboriginal men in custody as co-researchers and active contributors to service design and reform. The workshop will also showcase culturally responsive cognitive and behavioural programs, alongside an emerging artificial intelligence-enabled support tool designed to assist prisoners living with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) with comprehension, decision-making, and transition readiness.
Attendees will leave with practical strategies for building effective cross-sector partnerships, embedding Aboriginal governance, supporting data sovereignty, and ethically integrating emerging technologies within custodial settings.
The Acacia Prison experience demonstrates that when Aboriginal knowledge, lived experience, and evidence-informed practice are genuinely valued, correctional systems can become safer, more culturally responsive, and more effective for individuals, prisons, and communities alike.
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Brooke Dillon
Indigenous Cultural Advisor, Serco Justice, Australia
Brooke Dillon is a proud Palawa woman from Lutruwita who currently works on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja as the Indigenous Cultural Advisor at Acacia Prison, Australia's largest medium-security correctional facility.
In her role with Serco, Brooke leads the design and delivery of culturally responsive, community-led initiatives for Indigenous prisoners. Drawing on strong cultural knowledge, lived experience, and extensive community partnerships, she ensures cultural care, wellbeing, and engagement are grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing.
Brooke is recognised for her strengths-based and self-determination approach, creating meaningful opportunities for Indigenous voices, lived experience, and cultural authority to shape program design, service delivery, and custodial practice. Her work positions culture not as an adjunct to rehabilitation, but as a critical foundation for healing, behavioural change, and successful reintegration.
Through collaboration with Elders, Indigenous staff, researchers, and community-controlled organisations, Brooke has played a significant role in strengthening cultura safety and influencing systemic reform within custodial environments. She is a passionate advocate for sustainable systems change and believes lasting impact is achieved when Indigenous people are empowered to lead, inform, and shape the solutions affecting their communities
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John Harrison
Director Acacia Prison, Serco, Australia
John Harrison has dedicated more than 25 years to working alongside incarcerated Indigenous people across Australia, building a career recognised for innovation, cultural
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partnership, and reform in custodial practice. Throughout his leadership journey, John
has championed initiatives that place culture, connection, and lived experience at the centre of rehabilitation, including the pioneering Sierra Program for young adults in South Australia, Cultural Focus Units, and Western Australia's highly regarded "Tactical Aunties" initiative.
As General Manager of the 1,600-bed Acacia Prison, John has led a significant cultural transformation in response to the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in custody and the complex impacts of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder among young Indigenous men. Through strong partnerships with Indigenous communities, Elders, researchers, and universities, he has driven the development of culturally informed, evidence-based approaches that challenge traditional correctional models and deliver meaningful rehabilitation and reintegration outcomes.
John's leadership is grounded in collaboration and accountability to community. In recognition of his longstanding work with the Noongar community in Western Australia, he was accepted as an Honorary Noongar - a deeply significant acknowledgement that also carries ongoing cultural responsibility and obligation.
He will also share the powerful story of how Acacia Prison's cultural initiatives have contributed to reconnecting Western Australian Indigenous families with members of the Stolen Generations who were removed from their families during the 1970s and placed overseas, demonstrating the profound human impact that culturally grounded correctional practice can achieve.
