- The Guardian
- Issue #2130
Since the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody reported in 1991, there have been 582 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Most of the Commission’s 339 recommendations have not been implemented. Twenty-four of the deaths were in the last 12 months.
These deaths occurred whilst in the custody of corrective services, police or juvenile detention.
Since 1 January 2024, 24 Indigenous people have died in custody – that’s 2 a month on average.
During 2023-2024, a total of 104 deaths in total occurred in the custody of corrections, juvenile detention or Australian police. Twenty-three per cent of these deaths were Aboriginal, compared with 3.8 per cent of the population. Aboriginal people are vastly over-represented.
“Another key factor relating to why Aboriginal deaths in custody are of significance is that the lands of First Nations people were violently invaded and usurped by the British, which means these people who have been dispossessed of their lands, as well as continuing to have their self-determination denied, are dying at disproportionate rates inside their occupier’s prisons,” said Paul Gregoire of Sydney Criminal Lawyers.
“These deaths aren’t invisible to our communities. They are highly visible,” Dr Chelsea Watego told the ABC in 2021. The Mununjali and South Sea Islander academic added that the system often locks up First Nations people for matters that non-Indigenous people aren’t imprisoned for.
The deaths are a result of racism, abuse and neglect. Incredibly no one has been convicted for any of these deaths.
“We need to shift the gaze back: not upon our people, our communities and speak of what is wrong with us,” explained Dr Watego, during the 2021 documentary Incarceration Nation.
“But call out the systems that are perpetuating this violence, including the individuals that are part of those systems – to hold this place accountable to the lies that it tells itself about how its systems work.”
