Although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up around 2% of the national population, they constitute 27% of the national prison population.
This shameful reality is even greater for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who are 26 times more likely than their peers to be incarcerated.
This paper looks at the reasons behind this rise in New South Wales. 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.
In 2019–20 a total of 4,497 Indigenous young people were under youth justice supervision at some time during the year, with 87% (3,909) of these young people aged 10–17 and 13% (588) aged 18 and over (AIHW 2021a). On an average day in 2019–20: 2,493 Indigenous young people were under youth justice supervision.
Aboriginal people represented 37.2 per cent of deaths in custody and police operations in NSW – more than 10 times the proportion of Aboriginal people in the state.
Young Indigenous people are only 5.8% of all young people aged 10-17 in Australia but make up 49% of all young people in detention, according to the latest data released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
At current levels of incarceration a black male in the United States today has greater than a 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during his lifetime, while a Hispanic male has a 1 in 6 chance and a white male has a 1 in 23 chance of serving time.
The 1,700-bed state-of-the-art Clarence Correctional Centre, which began operations in 2020, is the largest and most advanced correctional centre in Australia. Serco will operate and maintain this facility on behalf of the NSW Government for the next 20 years.
Indigenous people are still 10 times more likely to die in custody than the general population.
Indigenous youth are overrepresented in both custody and community supervision, making up 48% of custody admissions and 39% of community admissions in 2017/2018 in the reporting jurisdictions.
Aboriginal people are more likely than non-Aboriginal people to reoffend on release, often due to: • a history of offending • unstable living conditions • low levels of education • high levels of unemployment, a significant contributor (84 per cent of Aboriginal inmates were unemployed at arrest or frequently ...
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600. The Indigenous Australian population is projected to reach about 1.1 million people by 2031 (ABS 2019b).
Total brain volume was significantly smaller for Aborigines (1199 +/- 84 ml) compared to Caucasians (1386 +/- 98 ml). Significantly smaller volumes were also found for cerebellum, prosencephalon-mesencephalon unit, cerebral cortex, frontal cortex, parieto-occipitotemporal cortex, and hippocampus.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
The minimum sentences for class A felonies are usually 10 years or higher. The minimum sentence for murder is 25 years. The maximum sentence for murder is 60 years. For aggravated sexual assaults on children, the first offense has a minimum sentence of 25 years.
Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police still make over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences.
This report presents information on the youth detention population in Australia from June 2017 to June 2021. Among the 819 young people in detention on an average night in the June quarter 2021, most were male (91%), aged 10–17 (83%) and unsentenced (72%). Half (50%) were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.
Despite pressure to raise the age of criminal responsibility in Australia, a child as young as 10 can still be given a custodial sentence in almost all states and territories. One boy's experience has seen him strip-searched, assaulted and locked up for hours at a time, and it hasn't led to reform.
On the other hand, robbery/extortion (7.6%) and drug-related offences (1.5%) were relatively low in comparison to non- Aboriginals (15.8% and 13.6% respectively (Figure 2). Alcohol-related violence is the most significant feature of serious crime committed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
The largest rate ratios are seen for deaths from Diabetes (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rate 5.2 times higher than the Non-Indigenous population), Cirrhosis and other diseases of the liver (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rate 3.7 times higher than the Non-Indigenous population), and Chronic lower ...