Indigenous imprisonment rates still rising, figures show
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Version 0 of 1. The number of Indigenous Australians in prison has grown by more than 80% in 10 years, and the overall imprisonment rate is at its highest level in 10 years, new data has revealed. According to the figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), at 30 June this year the national imprisonment rate was 185.6 prisoners per 100,000 adults, up by 13.4 since last year. It is the highest national imprisonment rate since 2004. The total number of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners increased by 10% year-on-year. The age-standardised rate of imprisonment per 100,000 Indigenous people increased from 1,731 to 1,857. Non-Indigenous imprisonment rates went from 133 to 144. The rate of Indigenous imprisonment is 13 times greater than non-Indigenous. Despite making up 2-3% of the population, 27% of all prisoners in Australian prisons were Indigenous, the ABS said. The proportion varied according to state, from 8% in Victoria up to 86% in the Northern Territory. Shane Duffy, chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (Atsil) told Guardian Australia the rates were not surprising. “It’s been an ongoing trend for many many years that our people have been incarcerated,” Duffy said. He said various government “tough on crime” policies failed to address the underlying socioeconomic issues driving the incarceration rates higher. “Some of those drivers … are around changes to bail laws, mandatory sentencing, looking also at the increased amount of people presenting with mental health issues and foetal alcohol spectrum disorders, and also more of a strict compliance around parole and probation and community service orders,” he said. “We need to look at it in a completely different way and realise that putting money into the prison system isn’t the way to deal with things. It’s actually dealing with those underlying issues that our people have.” The ABS data also found that one quarter of all people in prison were unsentenced, and three in five had been in prison previously, however that figure rose to four in five among Indigenous people. “We’re not talking about a massive number of people,” Duffy said about the high recidivism rates. “It’s a small cohort [of repeat offenders].” Duffy said programs like prisoner Throughcare had been shown to achieve results in reducing recidivism rates, according to Atsil data. “That’s about that prevention, diversion and actually supporting people to tap into the services they need to address issues in their life,” he said. “That is justice reinvestment. That is prisoner throughcare. The difference in the Throughcare service is they don’t just work with people before entering the system the way we used to. Throughcare is actually working with the hardest of hard, people who are so far entrenched with the criminal justice system.” A report from the productivity commission last week confirmed that government funding cuts had affected frontline Indigenous legal services, including the NSW prisoner Throughcare program, launched at the recommendation of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, which is no longer operating at all. The report on access to justice recommended the federal government inject $200m into community legal aid to address shortfalls and meet existing needs for the 10% of people who are disadvantaged and should be eligible for services. |