Number of Indigenous deaths in custody highest in more than 40 years

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australia has recorded the highest number of indigenous deaths in custody in 45 years. The Australian institute of criminology has revealed that 113 people died in custody last financial year 33 were indigenous. First Nations people accounted for nearly a third of all deaths, despite making up less than four per cent of the Australian population.

Transcript

00:00So we've heard a lot from experts and advocates over the last, you know, four decades and

00:06a lot today as well and most of them are calling for the recommendations from the Royal Commission

00:11into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody that was handed down in 1991 to be implemented. There

00:16was a number of recommendations that were put forward in that report. It was a landmark

00:19report and it looked at a number of deaths in custody during a period before 1991 and

00:25some of those were medical, ensuring that medical and mental health support was there, ensuring that

00:32there were prevention measures in place, hanging points were removed from cells and we are seeing

00:38a lot of deaths today and some many of those 33 deaths recently have been from some of those

00:45recommendations, have been from some of those causes that if implemented could have potentially

00:49been prevented. So a lot of advocates are saying that that is something that they are calling for,

00:54they are also calling for more investment into community organisations but they're also at the

01:00end of the day and what was mentioned back in that Royal Commission during that report was that the

01:04reason there are so many deaths in custody as well is because there are so many Torres Strait Islander,

01:09Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people in jail. Yeah and so how do you stop that in the first place

01:13and I guess it comes to questions of inequality and like broader issues like that. So a lot of the

01:18advocates today we heard from Narita Waite earlier who's from the National Aboriginal Legal Service and she

01:23was saying that a lot of issues are in community, we need to see more community-run organisations

01:29tackling things like homelessness. We've also heard from a number of other advocates who have talked

01:34about you know helping with cost of living, simple things that make people not turn to crime and

01:39there's a number of reasons that people will turn to crime. Some of that is also intergenerational trauma

01:43and intergenerational experiences, coming in contact with the prison system. We know that there are a lot of

01:48families who have numerous people who have gone to prison. So a lot of those things will impact on

01:53generations and they're really calling families, particularly the families of some of these 33

01:58people, are calling for change, calling for urgent change. It's been four decades that more needs to be

02:05done and we've heard from a number of politicians today as well calling out the federal government. The

02:10federal government, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that it was up to the states and territories to

02:14implement these recommendations and he was urging them to but we have also heard from lawyers and

02:20people like Senator Lydia Thorpe who have said that the government does have the constitutional power

02:26to enforce states and territories to abide by the closing the gap agreement. It is one of the targets

02:32in the closing the gap agreement. So there is mechanisms and levers that the federal government could pull

02:37in this place. Is there a real sense of frustration that this just keeps going around in circles for

02:43four decades or more? There is. It's really hard for an Indigenous family not to have been impacted

02:49by this. Most people know someone or a family member or a relative or a friend of someone who's been in

02:54custody or who has died in custody and we continue to see families go through the coronial inquest process

03:01which is really heartbreaking and harrowing. They hear they pretty much relive the way that their relative

03:05died in prison which can be quite emotional and a lot of those recommendations from those inquests are very

03:11similar to what was recommended in that Royal Commission in 1991 and that is frustrating and really

03:15saddening for families when they don't see institutional change happen whilst they continue to go through

03:23these really hard situations.

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