Aboriginal man's death in custody in Northern Territory prompts scrutiny
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Version 0 of 1. An Aboriginal man has died in the Alice Springs jail – the second Indigenous death in custody in the Northern Territory in less than a month. The 40-year-old man, an inmate at the Alice Springs correctional centre, died on Friday night, police said. Police would not release any further information, except to say they were investigating the circumstances and preparing a brief of evidence for the coroner. NT correctional services commissioner Ken Middlebrook said the incident was “very sad” and that officers and staff had followed protocol, the ABC reported on Saturday. “By all the reports I’ve read this morning they’ve done an outstanding job,” he said. The man, who was serving a prison sentence, complained of chest pains on Friday evening and staff “raised the alarm with medical people,” a spokeswoman for Middlebrook told Guardian Australia. He was taken to hospital in an ambulance but died en route, she said. Staff were still trying to notify the man’s next of kin, so they did not know when his identity would be released. In May a 63-year-old man from Yuendemu, in central Australia, died in the Darwin Watch House. Kwementyaye Langdon had been arrested for drinking in public and taken to the city watchhouse. He was found dead a few hours later. The attorney-general, John Elferink said he believed the man had pre-existing medical conditions but the government would wait for the coronial inquest findings. Langdon was detained under the controversial paperless arrest system introduced by the Northern Territory government six months ago, which allows police to arrest people for suspected minor summary offences and detain them for up to four hours without charge. Elferink has defended the police powers and dismissed accusations of a lack of accountability and transparency. Northern Territory policies of arrest and detention have come under scrutiny with claims they unfairly target Aboriginal people, and as such increase the likelihood of someone dying in custody. The 1993 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody found that the higher proportion of Indigenous people in custody translated to a higher rate of deaths, and while a “common thread of abuse, neglect or racism” could not be supported, “their Aboriginality played a significant and in most cases a dominant role in their being in custody and dying in custody.” The commission made 339 recommendations, including that all deaths in custody are automatically referred to the coroner. In October 2014 an Aboriginal woman died while being detained for mandatory alcohol treatment. Her death was referred to the coroner, but not treated as a death in custody, and police were criticised for not publicly reporting it until November. In 2012, 27-year-old Kwementyaye Briscoe died in the Alice Springs watchhouse. The coronial inquest heard Briscoe was dragged along the ground by police after he was taken into protective custody for being drunk. Police did not check on Briscoe for two hours or seek medical care for his injuries, the inquest was told. In his report, coroner Greg Cavanagh found “lack of care” by police resulted in his death. “That is to say this death was preventable and it should not have occurred.” Indigenous people are vastly overrepresented in Australian prisons, particularly in the Northern Territory where 86% of people incarcerated are Indigenous. The number of Indigenous prisoners has grown by more than 80% in the last 20 years, and the rate of Indigenous incarceration is 13 times that of non-Indigenous. • The use of the forename Kwementyaye is in keeping with Indigenous cultural traditions for naming of the dead. |