Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for 32% of all prisoners. 91% (11,744) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners were male. 9% (1,156) were female. The median age was 33.0 years.
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.
Age-standardised figures in 2002 showed that 20% of Indigenous people were the victims of physical or threatened violence in the previous 12 months, while the rate for non-Indigenous people was 9%. In 2011–2012, the percentage of Aboriginal homicide offenders decreased to 11% and victims to 13%.
Latest figures indicate that the Aboriginal imprisonment rate in NSW is nearly 10 times the non-Aboriginal imprisonment rate (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2020).
Just like any other group, the vast majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will never get in trouble with the law. However, despite making up only 2% of the general population, they make up 26% of the prison population and are 10 times more likely to be locked up than other Australians.
At 30 June 2022: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for 32% of all prisoners. 91% (11,744) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners were male. 9% (1,156) were female.
Incarceration rates are significantly higher for blacks and Latinos than for whites. In 2010, black men were incarcerated at a rate of 3,074 per 100,000 residents; Latinos were incarcerated at 1,258 per 100,000, and white men were incarcerated at 459 per 100,000.
Of the total of 106 recorded deaths in custody, there were 24 Indigenous deaths, 81 non-Indigenous deaths in custody and one death of a person whose Indigenous status was unknown.
Over half (56%, or 461 of 818) of all young people in detention on an average night in the June quarter 2022 were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.
While the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel safe in their communities and do not experience negative outcomes, they tend to experience greater rates of hospitalisation and death as a result of violence than the wider community.
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) found that “the high rates of Aboriginal deaths in custody was directly related to the underlying factors of poor health and housing, low employment and education levels, dysfunctional families and communities, dispossession and past government policies…
It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold distinct cultural rights and must not be denied the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their culture, and to have their traditional connections with land, waters and resources recognised and valued.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
Natural causes and suicide were the most common causes of death among Indigenous people who died in prison custody, while most non-Indigenous deaths were due to natural causes.
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 544 Indigenous deaths in custody since the Royal Commission.
The death rate for indigenous people was 5.65 per 100,000 of the general Aboriginal population. The rate for non-Aboriginal people was 0.3. The ratio of these rates indicates that Aboriginal people were 16.5 times more likely to die in custody.
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 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.
There were 13,716 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, up from: 13,197 in the December quarter 2022.
Incarceration rate in European countries in 2021
The country with the lowest incarceration rate in this year was Liechtenstein, which had 30.7 people in prison for every 100,000 inhabitants.
With more than one million women behind bars or under the control of the criminal justice system, women are the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population increasing at nearly double the rate of men since 1985.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.