Abstract: Many Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory (NT) live at the centre of an orchestrated bureaucratic catastrophe which radically diminishes the lives and ways of life of Aboriginal families, communities and societies. This brief article illustrates one aspect of that point, offering the simple premise that, for many Aboriginal people in the NT, the only form of secure accommodation is in a prison. This point is informed by interdisciplinary scholarship and by fieldwork carried out for my PhD in anthropology which explored the ways police and imprisonment impact families, communities and societies in the NT. The issues I address are chronic and systemic – that is, featuring across the Australian continent and particularly its Top End – so I write here in general rather than specific terms.