Death Rates per Custodial Population Aboriginal prisoners are therefore 1.26 times more likely to die in prison than non-Aboriginal prisoners.
Sixteen Indigenous people died in custody in 2021 – double the previous record in NSW, which was eight deaths in 1998.
Of deaths in police custody, the total between mid-1991 and mid-2016 was 146, with 47% attributed to accidental death (with most of these happening under police pursuit). 21% were attributed to natural causes, with self-inflicted deaths accounting for 19%.
The NDICP was established at the Australian Institute of Criminology in 1992 in response to recommendation 41 by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The NDICP is supported by a steering group. There have been 527 Indigenous deaths in custody since the Royal Commission.
Australia recorded 106 deaths in custody between July 2021 and June 2022, with the number of Indigenous people who died in custody rising to 516 in the 31 years since the royal commission.
Of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners: 28% (3,599) were in New South Wales, 26% (3,433) were in Queensland, and 20% (2,559) were in Western Australia. 91% (11,871) were male. 61% (7,884) were sentenced.
It's a story that has been repeated for generations of Aboriginal families in Australia, and it's still happening today. In 2019/20, 952 Aboriginal children across NSW were removed from their families, a 2.6% increase on the year prior.
The Commission has identified 3,200 deaths on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students and the Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed Residential School Students.
It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. This all took place under past Australian Government policies.
NSW last year passed a grim milestone. The number of Indigenous people who died in custody set a record of 16, the worst since records started in 1995 and double the previous high in 1998. Half of the deaths occurred in prison, seven during police operations and one in a hospital.
Why were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families? The forcible removal of First Nations children from their families was based on assimilation policies, which claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society.
The evidence suggests that most of the increase is due to increased severity by the criminal justice system in its treatment of Indigenous offenders. One quarter of the increase has come from remandees and three quarters from sentenced prisoners.
Some studies suggest that one of the factors contributing to the high number of custodial sentences is that Indigenous people are denied bail more frequently, resulting in longer periods of pre-trial detention or remand than non-Indigenous accused.
Indigenous people are overrepresented in Canadian criminal courts and far more likely than white people to be convicted and locked up once they come before a judge, according to a recent federal government study.
Poverty, assimilation policies, intergenerational trauma and discrimination and forced child removals have all contributed to the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in care, as has a lack of understanding of the cultural differences in child-rearing practices and family structure ( ...
The latest Australian Institute of criminology figures show there were 489 Indigenous deaths in custody since the end of the 1991 royal commission to June 30, this year. Stanley Russell: why did NSW police shoot an Aboriginal man dead in a Sydney house?
By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
The Bringing Them Home report (produced by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in 1987), says that "at least 100,000" children were removed from their parents.
Information exists in archives about the deaths of children, which has contributed to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's Memorial Register. As of May 24, 2022, the register has 4,130 confirmed names of children who died while at Indian Residential Schools.
Eleven percent of missing Native American children intake by NCMEC in the most recent decade had a reported history of being sexually abused, ranging from child sex trafficking (62 percent), sexual abuse by a family member (10 percent), statutory rape (13 percent), and sexual assault by an acquaintance (4 percent).
There, children were subjected to torture, trauma and death to “kill the Indian in the child.” Thousands of children died — 4,100 according to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the residential schools, although the actual number may have been as high as 15,000.
In 1915, the Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1915 (NSW) was introduced, this Act gave the Aborigines' Protection Board the authority to remove Aboriginal children without having to establish in court that the children were subject to neglect.
In NSW, under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board had wide ranging control over the lives of Aboriginal people, including the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families under a policy of 'assimilation'.
Families say they feel powerless in their fight against the Department of Territory Families, which is removing Aboriginal children at a rate almost 10 times higher than non-Indigenous children. It's a crisis being dubbed a "second stolen generation".